Poetry

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…

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…

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…

1. I don’t want to say, “This is called . . .” when I’m the one who called it this. 2. I don’t want to explain a poem to people. I want them to explain it to me. 3. I don’t want to pull rabbits out of top hats. But I’d love to hold a…

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…

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,”…

On the black stage, near the lectern, is a delicate table, and on it, within the spotlight, are a column of cups, a clear pitcher of water, and a vase of flowers, a graceful, domestic bouquet. This will be a long evening of reading and speaking, and the flowers are not ornament. The vase of…

We skim effortlessly over ice-clogged backwater bays past mounds of snow-covered trash and weathered signs that say Ed’s Lobsters or No Diving and I am suddenly struck by how little of everything there is. A woman beside me practices Italian: Has your sister lived in Rome long? Please get me a policeman. Her husband clips…

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…