Poetry

At Large

His anguish was the squeeze of strangers ravaging his language, English, his anger, strangled, snapped him free at twenty-one to choose a certain simmering neighborhood in the city for revenge, carnage, and split the scene with a new name, gunman, lavished on him by newsmen as he crossed state lines, tuning in. A small boy’s…

This I Call Home

Terrace Storms are inconsequential. A terrace always reverts, loyal subject, to the sun. Hallway A tunnel of betweenness. Here anything can bed anything. Back Fence I only wish it were higher. Don’t watch me. Front Porch Goddamn Astroturf, who’s it trying to fool? The one lone step, a mendicant slab— ungenerous to a fault, fatal…

The Unbosoming

I have been a day boarder, Lord. I have preferred the     table to the Bed. I have proffered, Lord, and I have profited, Lord,     but little, but not. I was Bored, Lord, I was heavy, Lord. Heavy bored. Hopeless,     Lord, hideous, Lord. Sexless. I was in love, Lord, but not with You….

Self-Portrait as My Name

The moment before I was born Mom sent Dad to Kepley’s Drive-in for a country ham sandwich. My unspoken name was country ham sandwich. My spoken name was tank because I rolled over and crushed the world, and was made of green metal. I was later called “surprise,” a polite name for stolen. Go to…

History

I. The land beside me filled with snakes. I would lose my land. They would come on camels, they would come on elephants. They would take Woman from the dark stone room. Knock over the clay. Knock the wind against the wall. Let it scatter. II. The order of the pebbles this way goes. Which…

Gravity

In another hemisphere, it might be Spring. On another planet, there might be fifteen suns and no moon. You run the risk of no Miles Davis, no oxygen to breathe, no hyperbole. In the far-off corners of the cosmos, there might be ten key touch. There might be a constellation that resembles the profile of…

Flies

They’ll come she says just smear some jelly from your sandwich on the back of your hand and wait how she passes the drowsy hour of math before lunch the initials carved like Braille on the desk a fly alights on her sleeve her wrist they are drawn to us drawn to what is sweet…