Poetry

  • An Attempt

    for Osip Mandelstam   For us, all that’s left is a dried bee, tilted onto one wing. Not long ago, a bloom fastened its tongue, while its belly tried unsuccessfully to tip it backwards. We mustn’t touch— anything without water is without give. This bee is our scout— one day, dust will pronounce itself in…

  • Making Sure the Tractor Works

    A drunk man reels his tractor around the square lawn, midnight. His wife stares from the front door window as if on a half-sunk ship’s deck at a shark tearing through the dark water. She chews her thumbnail raw. Two of their sons, in blue pajamas, shuffle across the linoleum rubbing their eyes. She plays…

  • Fat Crow Above Me

    From a rain-stained square tunneled into the rough-shingled roof, the skylight begins, in small creaks, to complain. I crane, look straight up at the bottoms of two black feet— three prongs and inches, each; between them dips the hammock of a full-bellied crow, round and big as the cauldron he belongs in. From below, I…

  • The Amphibrach

    (Amphibrachys pedalis) This rare symmetric newt has short limbs that abut a strong unspotted body. Its habitats are worldwide, but naturalists list it as native to Limerick. Hatched from equipoised egg, the newborn amphibrach swims to rhythms of water rippling in rural ponds; wriggles equal forelimbs to dodge the gape of fish-mouths. As tail flutters…

  • Still Life on Brick Steps

    My brother and I without coats on the front porch waved goodbye, the day our father left, with hands held low, close to our chests, so our mother behind us at the window couldn’t see. She stayed inside, and when his car took the corner, we turned and saw her—the curtains, long and white, parted…

  • Waking

    Surfacing from the deepest pool I’ve ever fallen into, I emerge gasping for air, and searching for something to tell me where I am and how I got there. Strangers dressed in white who aren’t nice don’t tell me anything I need to know. They just circle the bed, brandishing that tube that brings a…

  • A ’49 Merc

        Someone dumped it here one night, locked the wheel and watched it tumble into goldenrod and tansy, ragweed grown over one door flung outward in disgust. They did a good job, too: fenders split, windshield veined with an intricate pattern of cracks and fretwork. They felt, perhaps, a rare satisfaction as the chassis crunched…

  • Ballot

    for Jeanie Bauserman This year, I vote for the ash and linden trees, the boxwood shrubs, the magnolia, the blacksmith, the curator, the music of motherhood, I vote for the pylons of fathers, the man in the turban, the sitar player, the Nigerian drummer, a country walk, a walking mall in the center of town,…