Poetry

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…

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…