In that hour of boundless night when dark tugs at me with its bustle and fuss and the grass outside my window, gone a deep blue, chirrs and clicks with crickets and my thoughts flop and twitch like fish in a galvanized bucket and sweat soaks the sheets, collecting in drops down my spine and…
Mid-August. Crippling heat. Torpor. Lungs weighed down by the stubborn air. Sudden, hyperbolic, dog-startling storms each afternoon, uninspired repertoire of kettle- and window-rattling. Who’d settle for an arrangement like this? Who wouldn’t? Too hot to do otherwise. Hard to think twice or overachieve in such weather. One is compelled to be dumb, to slump on…
translated by Angela Ball When dolphins follow the boats, they dress in pink to soften the hate in men’s gazes. “How can they hate us if we make love like they do?” Many say that at night the dolphins grow pubic hair and go out stealing women. The children think that the dolphins are gringos…
translated by Angela Ball The people of this town are allowed to have as many masks as they can buy. Our parents work, and we have fun playing blind man’s bluff and cowboys. The closets are full of masks, but on Halloween the chief of police prohibits disguises. That night the masks have to talk…
for Eleanor Wilner Sometimes there is even too much of what we don’t want. This dancing planet, its many communiqués hurtling across us. My lover types endearments into space, swears he can only see my back. Something in it that is diluted and dark, something in the distance that is lunar,…
Words, together we’ll have the wedding feast, I’ll spread the canopy, bring the glass for you to crush. You’ll arrive early, time and light in your pocket, dark boxes in the car, each with the name of an object. Alone this way, no guests expected—jars, bottles, vials with things like knife, cloud, and blood. Leave…
Glad to see people thought of it, brought Warren’s darts, a bag of chewing tobacco, his baseball cap, a book of poems, some photos. Glad that the mortician tried his best to dress him in coat, shirt, and tie—the wound was through the back and out the chest, I keep thinking—and firm the lip, close…
Slice of yellow wind in yellow curtains I sewed although the house was never mine except where the rod went through. Breeze does it. Or snow on pines. Faint click of yellowing spoons. Or crow-call piercing snow-pine reflected in the spoon-shaped past, its wing its crescent moon. Seeking any equally black thing. There,…
Like following a woodland path again and again Used to We made love like nobody’s business Things so far Have been good for me only the first time around The deeper the day, the lonelier the blue Thank the Lord the window’s open Baby’s got gas Like smoke in humid air We’re graceful, our hair…
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