Poetry

from “The Changing Face of AIDS” The day he came to give his estimate, the rap he played came echoing amidst the tall Victorians that line our street— a jarring rumble, even in the cave that they create. He wore a rumpled shirt emblazoned with his name. “I’m Rafael— it’s nice to meet you, Dex.”…

Cy Twombley, set of five paintings, 1985 Here it is, the Impressionist garden raised to another level of fluidity, no shape assembling itself in a wash of pink and red, a watery garden where one color flows into another, roses blazing and bleeding, pink, crimson, carmine, scarlet, until the color flames to blood, the colours…

Two months after she died, Billy asked: How’s Lynda doing? Billy, I said, she died, remember? Under the weight of supper’s constellation, the table wavered. Manic, he’d cook and then he’d insist on cleaning up: it calms me. Just now remembering, I remember, embarrassed, he’s dead, too. What’s the distance between a source and its…

November 1997 Its bare branches the winter before were exuberant scrawls against a blank sky about to snow and then snowing, or runes punctuated by the brownish-gray question marks of squirrels. And this fall, the leaves were so gold they looked heavy as Cleopatra’s burnished throne or as some feeling unexpressed. The one tree in…

Overcast till 4 p.m. Gunshot-like crackling punctuates the hazy afternoon— premature fireworks as neighborhood kids prepare earsplitting festivities in honor of Independence Day. Bees big as doorknobs buzz drunkenly by, barely able to remain airborne. The dog races ahead through Elysian Park. We’re on a dirt trail that winds through California scrub—scorched hillsides of orange…

As if their very comeliness were centrifugal, one falls forward slightly toward the husband and wife standing together under the outdoor lights of a summer party. Sunburnt, vibrant, expressive, perfectly proportioned, they make clear, unwittingly and in relief, our ordinary, passably-attractive selves. God and goddess, or king and queen, amassing mythic energy as they speak…

Number 280 in the Audubon Society Field Guide At first it seems the most subtle     of spirits, inhabiting invisibly this dense, adumbral light at the bottom of the woodland         understory, the rise and fall of its own recurring phrase     so tremulous, so mournful a tone, we resist our impulse to pause beneath…

1959 When we set out on the train to Agra I thought, What an old palace we are going to see,         it’s an old grave. I was tired when we reached the station and you hired a taxi to take us to the steps of the Taj Mahal; you couldn’t even wait until morning,…

Thank God for the beaver pond. You know     I had my doubts about cutting the two-hour trail         so close to the pond, but those animals are not shy, and let me tell you: it was destiny.     Those two men I guided last night? They said         they had come all the way…