Poetry

  • Reality Demands

    — translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak Reality demands we also state the following: life goes on. It does so at Cannae and Borodino, at Kosovo Polje and in Guernica. There is a gas station in a small plaza in Jericho, and freshly painted benches near Bila Hora. Letters travel between Pearl Harbor and…

  • Dear Homeboy

    There’s a stealthy, sort of leopard- like knocking at my door tonight I half wish were you, but the sky’s grainy violet and no one’s out there loitering darkly like a dent. Know what’s going down? Total eclipse of the moon, Kid—it’s pretty dim out, just the gas station’s block of light like the landmark…

  • Eye-Full Tower

    Where a love-dock jutted into the Narrows I took turns with friends at a crack of light someone scraped into the one black window of The Eye-Full Tower, and saw through the tight crush of men a woman dancing naked, her sequined bridle glittering down her breasts drenched in luminous sweat and smoke-haze. From one…

  • The Crying Room

    The church had a crying room— up at the opposite side of the altar. Good for the baby. It was glass on all sides like a tank. A microphone brought in the priest’s voice. From the crying room we could see how things happened backstage: someone coming to the priest with a bell and a…

  • The Wounded Chandelier

    I went into a bar and ordered a childhood dream. A woman came in and sat down next to me. She was rather lanky for an amputee. A voice said She’s too shallow to dive into. You’ll break your noose on her concrete psyche. I didn’t listen. As a way of shattering the ice, I…

  • A Version of Happiness

    for Ellen Bryant Voigt Tonight the band’s Nigerian— Afro-Cuban, last week; next week, Cajun: the summer multicultural concert series in the San Juan Capistrano Library courtyard; two hundred of us, all ages, in the audience; Edenic evening air and stars: tickets six bucks. You’d love this music, this place: the musicians are like poets (they…