Poetry

The Biopsy

When I closed my eyes I thought about playing tennis with him a long time ago on the deserted court, a mile from the ocean. And the rallies that lasted a long time. While the overhead clouds drifted like gulls. Thought not so     much about him as the field of us. The sun-embalmed afternoons…

If I Must Be Saved

A spacious night, the ward quiet but for a male nurse humming Klezmer music to your roommate, an elderly Polish widow suffering in body only, her roofless mind deluged by grace as the first priest to orbit Earth administers extreme unction to New York City, its helium balloon of Christ punctured beyond repair and dying…

The Heart

The child is being pushed by the mother, in the swing that lifts over the deep lawn in May. Is being pushed towards the tall hedge of bamboo where the father must go in a world that is houses and neighbors gardens and furniture. Until the child floats backwards through     the air to be…

Winds

We need centuries of them. You wake up late in the morning, the dark wind flowing through you, and all day long it is the only thing that makes sense: wind, that slides a hand under your boots on the pavement and carries; wind, that slices at the lips and cuts. In it we listen…

Tomes

There is a section in my library for death and another for Irish history, a few shelves for the poetry of China and Japan, and in the center a row of imperturbable reference books, the ones you can turn to anytime, when the night is going wrong or when the day is full of empty…

What I Looked at Today

1. Today I walk, find countless calla lilies. How anything grows its own perfect white and stays that way—unafraid of world. It is lovely, so I look. It doesn’t matter what it thinks of me. 2. This is what I’ve been given to look at. I never chose to be here— California gardens, riches. There…

Coconut in the Mail

for Mary Sorry for the tardiness of my response. I’ve been lost in thought, unable to reach you. Your message arrived, brown, brain-sized nut, stripped to its rough shell, my name and address singed on. I want you to know I read it carefully, held it to my ear and listened to the mystery that…