Poetry

Unmet Thursday

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…

Razorback

Son of a felon, his father was famous for eating through the wall of a Wisconsin prison. Seven hours later his conception in a Villanova railcar. It was a year of locusts. All he knows is clothing: days with the flat iron and dry cleaning fluids. Starch. I tape my hems straight, and nothing gets…

Empire

This morning, our first snow. It only sticks to roofs, the grass still green and brown. Right now we are bombing Baghdad. I’ve finished my coffee, lit another cigarette. The halogen-white ceiling, the windows fogging up. Neighbors leaving for work and coming home from work. In the kitchen, bacon popping. Right now my father sleeps…

After the Storm

Before, I did not believe In lightning, its work, the mad climb up from ground Desperate to marry what descends. The sudden need For more than one path, the white hand spread, The elaborate delta. Before the storm, I did not understand; I thought revelation Would come later, just when I wasn’t looking— The way…

Husbandry

My solemn hens. Electric bulb, the door Locked twice. To keep from hearing the promise of Coyote we dream of the rooster claiming dawn Even as he flees to the unknown forest. But morning brings back what remains And as I enter all eyes turn golden; The autumn haunches shift. How quickly they forget What…

The Sentimental Museum

Ann Mikolowski, 1940–1999 dead/as in                          center                          or right Goya titled his paintings of war things like Shouting’s No Good and Nobody Could Help Them Gaundi hung weights to visualize and actualize his works upside down and now strange hands have forced on a brutality that Gaundi never meant no fluidity in somebody’s else’s…

Writer in Exile

I’ve wished that I were born a Soviet, so that my presence in America would cause as greatly dignified regret as leads to literary coups d’état— but I am merely Cuban, dark and small as any from a hundred nations which exist for other’s domination. All I say is colonized, if not by rich “protectors,”…