Poetry

          More in number, five or six at a time perched atop stiff cat-           tail tufts or calling from lush caverns in the willow limbs—more           on the wing, more flash and blood, more wild song, who seldom travel           in numbers bigger than a pair—the red- wings returning this           spring to the…

When Grandma was dying in the rope bed, no one said much. I had pinworms, used to wake up and hunt for them in the sheets. Dad taught me rummy and chopsticks on the piano. Mom took turns with Aunt Sarah wiping Grandma down. Mostly I wasn’t allowed in but I peeked anyhow, seeing how…

Gray cloud like a sweater pulled over the heart of the moon. High-napped purple sky. Why are so many friends Leaving or getting left behind? Mao’s anti-sparrow campaign: to kill and eat the birds That were eating the grain. Winter sun drifts away Leaving thin taffy light. Venus Mercury Jupiter— Three pearls in the morning…

It’s winter in the tiny motel. The man and woman lie down naked and freezing. A blizzard streaming on the television, gloss of ice on the windows, the bourbon a bottle of fire. After love she licks his cold sweat, trying to seal herself into him. Smoke from their cigarettes rising, disappearing as they sink…

How many nights have I lain here like this, feverish with plans, with fears, with the last sentence someone spoke, still trying to finish a conversation already over? How many nights were wasted in not sleeping, how many in sleep—I don’t know how many hungers there are, how much radiance or salt, how many times…

At seven a.m., nobody’s here but me and the pigeons and a few sparrows caucusing in his hair. Everyone knows how patient he was. I talk to him sometimes, but he never answers. “Good morning, Mr. Lincoln. I’m going to clean you up real good today.” His hands rest on the chair, yet I’ve seen…

I’m remembering the time you sat on a roof in Wisconsin to get away for a smoke, and a drunk senior stumbled to the edge of the roof to take a piss then folded his body down next to yours. Below, a faint sound of drums and bass throbbed through the house. “Pigs,” said the…

for Reynolds Price   This morning in my bathroom mirror, I glimpsed the slope of my shoulders, my chest thinning to a hint of ribs, the hair of my pouching belly black and beaded with water, and pondering myself limp and priestly, laced with blue veins, I judged nothing threatening. Sometimes, I admit, I even…

Almost winter and the groundskeepers are firing     blanks into the trees, scattering a nuisance of grackles from the branches—     Enough, say the guns, enough of all your excrement and birdsong, and the very sight is futility: great fistfuls     of black confetti, the way they soar out shrill with panic and return    …