Poetry

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…

A hand is the terminus of a human arm, thirty-six or more connected bones and muscles, all designed for grasping but that’s not how it seems to many of us: the tourists on the lawn, shielding their eyes against the glare, me, waving back     as though I were visible, the girl at the Burger…

We hate the future in early fall. You are worn and I am sorrow if sorrow is a woman who cannot see. Tell me our story. Were we perfect at seventeen? Did we make love in a hotel shower while someone nearby knocked and pleaded into the night? Did you visit New York in mourning?…

The overrated owe a great debt to the little: the pinpoint feet of shrimp unleash the tide pool billows. The mismatched flecks within the rock make granite glitter. Could the gnat impart the summer with her shimmer? Each spring the tightness of the soil is tirelessly relieved by the boring of a worm: she dares…

I didn’t want to only dream in black and white, but when the colors came back they frightened me, the reds I’d thought I craved, their technicolor poisons shimmering, an errant lens, a gauzy burning dress. Smooth forms deceive, give way to their own chaos. It seemed all equal signs had fallen off the earth—…

I am not seaworthy. Look how the fish mistake my hair     for home. I had a life, like you. I shouldn’t be     riding the sea. I am not seaworthy. Let me be earthbound; star fixed mixed with sun and smacking air. Give me the smile, the magic kiss to trick little boy death…

At that time I didn’t understand snow, the absence inside July, water and what holds the water in. Heard “It takes more than a forest to make a tree” in no one’s voice. By then the word meridian was extinct, echo without a face to place it, make it stay. Birds’ theories of heat hunch…