Poetry

The moment before I was born Mom sent Dad to Kepley’s Drive-in for a country ham sandwich. My unspoken name was country ham sandwich. My spoken name was tank because I rolled over and crushed the world, and was made of green metal. I was later called “surprise,” a polite name for stolen. Go to…

I. The land beside me filled with snakes. I would lose my land. They would come on camels, they would come on elephants. They would take Woman from the dark stone room. Knock over the clay. Knock the wind against the wall. Let it scatter. II. The order of the pebbles this way goes. Which…

Death does not speak to me with meaty breath although ancient hamburgers dance through my veins and the leering buffalo skull on the wall above my couch dribbles drool onto my heart. At fifty, I have learned to see the Grim Reaper in all his disguises. I can see him in a can of Budweiser….

In another hemisphere, it might be Spring. On another planet, there might be fifteen suns and no moon. You run the risk of no Miles Davis, no oxygen to breathe, no hyperbole. In the far-off corners of the cosmos, there might be ten key touch. There might be a constellation that resembles the profile of…

They’ll come she says just smear some jelly from your sandwich on the back of your hand and wait how she passes the drowsy hour of math before lunch the initials carved like Braille on the desk a fly alights on her sleeve her wrist they are drawn to us drawn to what is sweet…

this is god’s other flood my whole grave rising into the dirty-oven colored sky on that couple of wings you gave me

Let no air ever come between you. No clean sheet. No lamplight. No dust. Let the hotel curtain be your guide, the absolute fabric, the craving to get lost like a strong thread. Go blank against one another. Turn blue. That’s day and night. Stop needing your own blood so. Dry up and get in…

Scraps of foil, I think: someone’s littered, but the choppy glitter makes its way down the beach. Closer, I see the little fish red-eyed, lying in twos or strangely head-to-tail. Some heads are raised, gaping, as if to question this new solid air where they’ve been chased by a run of blues. Where I’m battling…

Your images come to you like the lost buffalo. In the sundown of your fancy, in the slanted town, two men face each other in the street. After the war, we all lived in a ruined city. I wore my black tie every day to class. The night they come calling for you, they don’t…