Poetry

John began to tell friends of his new ability to see not only colors but sounds . . . about the same time that he began to have trouble remembering words. —Bruce Miller, “A Passion for Painting” I remember that one, it has wings like those things that fly, it’s green or chartreuse, I saw…

The talk show this morning stars those who prefer self-satisfaction to making love with another. Both male and female artists in the tradition of Onan are present in comfortable chairs, quite at home discussing their methods. They often turn to crafted latex, a phallus more reliable than that on a man. And by the way,…

translated by Marilyn Hacker Nothing disturbs the duck on the pond’s edge Either at sunrise or at dusk Nor those others placed in the abundant hair Which spreads its auburn rust in constellations On the pond’s surface, tepid stars Swarming in the hemisphere of cold Time breeds like this too, spreads out Across the stillness….

for Tom Lynch Huge glossy beetles doze in this room, each with a lifted wing-case the size of a car door. They are only fed once, then close themselves with a click. Too heavy to fly in their mahogany and oak, they have grown handles.

for Roger Erickson Language, I have wanted you to have a body that knows itself; I have wished you could sing in the tempo of my last inclination. I have wanted you made of metal or oil, or soil— I have wanted. I have wanted. Language, it has taken years, but I have made my…

They took me to see the Emu of wonder eat out of a sack. They took me to see the Pronghorn pronking endlessly. They took me to see the White Hart at night, lit by headlights. I hiked to the top of the falls to see the Coho surrender. I heard the Pekinese suffering behind…

Vaporous carousels passing soundless: man on lawn under brother-clouds. Swollen-breasted red robin present then gone, back to pick such reeds with a friend. Beak’s-work done, their cries are hatched, perhaps brought on by the man, perhaps of vectors sprung from the hectic mind that makes a bird’s tail swivel into radians, as if, fast upon…

I arrive again in the right place but with the wrong set of objects: a keyboard with four or five letters rearranged (in a crooked row) so it’s hard to keep things from coming true by accident. The nerves scrape feeling from the heart sac and refer it to skin on the left shoulder. The…

I’m smoking a cigarette and having a drink with the only woman who’s right for me. I’m telling her a joke that isn’t that funny but we laugh anyway as if it were, and then it is. Ideal forms are everywhere, the chairs on which we sit, the windows to our left and right, our…