Poetry

  • Complacent

              Maybe on the shore of the lakewhere eagles live and breathe again,swooping over toddlers frightening all,I sought a rock that was flat,one to skip over the calm surface of the water to impress the child. And maybe the rock had fallen fromanother planet, tumbled, burned itself to a size human though still full of…

  • Andy Warhol hides a third eye

    Translated by Ming Di  With the key of paintbrushhe opens another door;he asks a flower to invite people to a waltz. Light dazzles the dance floor. To the other end of the realm of dreamshe captures the poet John Giorno, sleeping. What game is it, what strangeness, that experiences time?What is time?A capsule? Frozen in…

  • Safety Plan

    Imagine yourself a sequoia, down to the roots, El Niñoshaking the leaves. You want to say invade instead of shake,but that doesn’t feel safe. Roots like those, they stay in the earth: so keep your breathvisual. Paint until it feels right, even if Oregon smokefloats across the Rockies to scent your hair. Your insides twist…

  • Fair Trade Sonnet

    A horse, a horse, my dumb king for a horse. My brand-new horse—the naysaying centrist—for state senate. The suede backseat of my thousand-horsepower hearse for a spare 10,000 hoursto practice basic survival, the fine art of making a slow exit look painless. My last supper for an everlasting grain of saltto dose my days with…

  • Interval (Riding Westward)

    After John Donne You. Gone now—to a better place, you would say, not on the earth. You are on my screen. A photo Paul took in the doctor’s office, an hour before you passed, whichI received in the security line. Writing now, in the air. Do not photograph me, please, You often said—no pictures. What…

  • The King’s Garden

    Translated by Andrej Pleterski If I were to write she stood there,in a fast-food restaurant,ordering soft ice cream,with the nearby park in cherry blossoms,if I were to write her pink was more distinct,everywhere: the socks, the cape, the lips, the eyelids,an adorned tree with a lively past,if I were to write she had already ordered…

  • Catechesis: Pontiac “Silver Streak” Deluxe Edition

    an ekphrastic golden mashup after Gwendolyn Brooks “We Real Cool” &Russell Lee’s April 13, 1941 photo “Negro Boys on Easter Morning” Carlos, Lee, Kendrick, Jaimey, me—oooooh, Wepooled the marble money, nickel cokes Real cool.            Southside breeze, brave now, we laugh, we groove, We             freeze, we grit teeth, oooooh, Ms. Brooks knew, y’all Left           school.  We unplug-the-kitchen-phone worried, We(I-brought-you-in-this-world)…