Poetry

Say that moment crossing over isn’t heard Say the hammer-anvil-stirrup don’t unfurl Say the balance was upset Say this balance was upset Say the outside world doesn’t ring Say the mind’s ear listening to an odd man singing Say the moment crossing over starting somewhere out and in Say the balance was upset Say this…

I hate the psyche. Cloudy today: brown, carmine, and blue. I’m having a devilish time controlling my body’s two gods: theatric, tutelary. Last night I decided again to be a maniac, risking brain fever, like my father, whose temperature once rose to 108: impressive. In our house, only the sick were great.

Annual festival of the god of reborn souls and abandon, The young drunken one who dies and in springtime rises: From all over the City families come to the great amphitheater Bringing picnics of roast fowl, rounds of bread, cheeses, Preserved salt meats, clay jars of wine and citron water, Feasting all afternoon on the…

for César Vallejo To speak with a simple mouth. No more big words. Bread works. Butter, a long walk by the river works, salt, fog, wood. I know how to turn myself cold, to cut everything off— I can slice my heart to minnows, but it’s my wish to remain alive, God with and without…

Cryptic owl on my sill, olive branch in the gold-bowered cope, when I was a child I didn’t know what the word “colleague” meant: darkness? My father had many colleagues; I had none. I told his assistant, twenty-one years ago, “I wonder which I love most, words or music.” I can’t remember her advice, though…

Again on the highway with tears in my eyes, cadenced by rhythm of concrete and steel, music of cloud vapor, music of signs—Blue Flame Clown Rental/Color Wheel Fencing—again overcome, again fever-driven, transported among the pylons and skidmarks of the inevitable, sirens and call-boxes of a life I have laid claim to with a ticket found…

When I was younger I loved until I disappeared. I rested my head in my hand and saw only the beloved: his unruly words, the chocolate of his eyes, each hair on his head a vine from the soul. If we were sitting at a table— the other people around us, the table itself, the…

The light that woke the mayor made him think of town. It was a pale pink light ticked out by a palpitating bulb that droned above the empty road he lived on. He sat upright in bed, noticed his posture, how his jutting head sought equilibrium and not much else. God was far off. And,…

Peacock, I have to tell you, your feathers are beautiful. Snake, your length is my life. Mighty elephant, I never forget the corner I came from. Your shell, long-living turtle, is my crown. I preach the laugh of the hyena. Dear horse, thank you for my head of hair. Thank you, sweet ox, for the…