Poetry

Who knows what led me there—a twelve-year-old leading my eight-year-old brother and his overnight guest into the one clean room of that four-story brownstone and plunging into the booze while our parents slept. Maybe it was genetic curiosity, colliding with vodka, a fifth of cheap Russian, and scorching a tunnel to our guts as we…

Having awakened again at 4 a.m. inside the skull-dungeon in which my brain’s chained like a nasty old man muttering, nattering, keeping me from sleeping with the usual complaints about the accommodations, I focused as usual on my breathing, asked blessings on every living human being by name, alphabetically, one at a time, except of…

I love early mornings in a new hotel, traveling west and up on East Coast time, before room service starts delivery, searching the lobby or even down in the kitchen for coffee, to greet dawn with the night clerk, starting his wake-up calls. I find a paper from the bundle by the revolving door and…

Custome is the most certain Mistresse of language, as the publicke stampe makes current money. But we must not be too frequent with the mint, every day coyning. —Ben Jonson Into my pocket slips a folded note, creased like labia, cached with private promise. Pea blossoms in broth. And my in petto pleasure in thinking…

Again on the highway with tears in my eyes, cadenced by rhythm of concrete and steel, music of cloud vapor, music of signs—Blue Flame Clown Rental/Color Wheel Fencing—again overcome, again fever-driven, transported among the pylons and skidmarks of the inevitable, sirens and call-boxes of a life I have laid claim to with a ticket found…

When I was younger I loved until I disappeared. I rested my head in my hand and saw only the beloved: his unruly words, the chocolate of his eyes, each hair on his head a vine from the soul. If we were sitting at a table— the other people around us, the table itself, the…

The light that woke the mayor made him think of town. It was a pale pink light ticked out by a palpitating bulb that droned above the empty road he lived on. He sat upright in bed, noticed his posture, how his jutting head sought equilibrium and not much else. God was far off. And,…

Peacock, I have to tell you, your feathers are beautiful. Snake, your length is my life. Mighty elephant, I never forget the corner I came from. Your shell, long-living turtle, is my crown. I preach the laugh of the hyena. Dear horse, thank you for my head of hair. Thank you, sweet ox, for the…

The sun came to in late December. Spring seemed just the thing that flattered into bloom the murdered shrubs along the splintered fence. The awnings sagged with puddles. Roads were streams. Wet leaves in sheets streaked everything with rust. The man who raked his lawn transferred a toad too small to be a toad back…