Poetry

  • The Tenants

    I saw them everywhere: in the backyard spiraling up inside the pale lilacs, invisible in the hall closet where old books were stored, even playing in the fireplace ash. Late at night, I’d bump into them in the bathroom. The tile floor was icy and they were on their knees, all those homeless spirits, blowing…

  • from Paragraphs from a Daybook

    My life ago, in this renascent slum shabby Jews in sweatshops, with irregular papers, wherever they came from, gathered mid-morning around a samovar enthroned amidst rows of Singer sewing machines. They trusted the Republic. They were last seen being beaten with rifle butts onto sealed trains. Their great-nephews are Orthodox extremists; their great-nieces are hash-smoking…

  • Triclinuim: Couple Bending to a Burning Photo

            Inside ourselves, inside ourselves so long             we are engravened there. Inside     the hot streets mazing                   from the Suq to fractious cul-de-sacs, piss smell     & whitewashed alleyways,             mules & taxi radios throbbing Rai                   & still inside ourselves. (Still with our own canopic jar—     pulsing from its negative        …

  • The Black Shoe

    Newlyweds, up at the Del Mar station, saw the woman stumble & fall, & ran back to pull her to safety, the train bearing down. For a thousand feet north of the point of impact, investigators found parts of a briefcase, sketches of gowns, a low-heeled black shoe. From the White House, the President screaming…

  • The Twelve Hats of Napoleon

    In the painting the twelve hats look pretty much alike. Tricorns, they’re called, and when studying them in their invisible grid, one inevitably thinks of his face. An allegory about Napoleon: The parts of his face had always hated each other. Like wild stars in a burning sky, many-a-time they came dangerously close to colliding….