Poetry

for René Touzet Is music, then, a balcony from which a shuffling of passings is surmised, or is it mortar and archway, or must it be inkling, maestro, a suspicion of survivals? We sit in rows to watch ourselves listen to your danzas and contradanzas, the Cubanized European genres which define a certain buoyancy in…

According to her housemate, she is out with Bob tonight, and when she’s out with Bob you never know when she’ll get in. Bob is an English professor. Bob used to be in a motorcycle gang, or something, or maybe Bob rides a motorcycle now. How radical of you, Bob— I wish I could ride…

In the closet the dress lives, a deep white in its vinyl bag, eternal, the empire waist so stylish before her time and after, its crêpe ivoried, tartared like a tooth, feeding on what leaks through the zipper’s fervent mesh, an unmentionable, unworn, waiting, immortally in mind. Open a window, please, I’m feeling faint. On…

For his sake drifting away from the true windlessness, torn sails the aftermath of him: white canvas suffering too vaguely from the beautiful agreeing with these arguments, but far away: sought him, found him not, distant from image, archetype, the typical sublime’s encroachments, archaeology of his innocence which is to be destroyed. Shaped, shaping, shapes,…

After the party ends another party begins and the survivors of the first party climb into the second one as if it were a lifeboat to carry them away from their slowly sinking ship. Behind me now my friend Richard is getting a fresh drink, putting on more music, moving from group to group—smiles and…

Waiting for their release— for the shoes without laces, the belts kept from suicide —drumming, When will they be released, when and will they ever? The hours so used to their own sequence cannot pass one another. Diamond Ear waits here for his esposa, and inside the held-in selves stare at their feet. They hate…

David with the Head of Goliath, 1609–10? No bronze, paraphernalia, or feathers. No euphoric cheers or parade. Simply The slayer and his prey. The boy’s body Shines horrific as a candle. Without Tenderness, the light cuts his skin Across the arm; around a nipple; his chest And neck; across the wrinkles of his brow, His…

The air turns red: rumors of sex, death rumors, rumors of rumors, offering their feigned collective sympathy. So sad she dumped her latest husband . . . Tragic that he showed up sloshed (again!)— at the wedding reception, staggered into the cake, face-down at the tiny feet of the sugar couple . . . Poets’…

French postcard, circa World War I In agreeing to be the crucified woman, she knew she would need to hang there with no pockets, no purse, no pearls. She would know how to stretch into it when the time came. Did she enjoy an innate ballerina who could express befitting grace? While still her bearing…