Poetry

I search the pond’s portrayal of my face for my father. This woman’s brow, so smooth, disdains its heritage and hides the truth. Its lineaments reveal almost no trace of his. But I must clear an open space to mirror him in, because since his death I feel as distant as “map-isopleth,” which is, I’ve…

Where a love-dock jutted into the Narrows I took turns with friends at a crack of light someone scraped into the one black window of The Eye-Full Tower, and saw through the tight crush of men a woman dancing naked, her sequined bridle glittering down her breasts drenched in luminous sweat and smoke-haze. From one…

The early sun is so pale and shadowy, I could be looking up at a ghost in the shape of a window, a tall, rectangular spirit looking down at me in bed, about to demand that I avenge the murder of my father. But the morning light is only the first line in the play…

We need centuries of them. You wake up late in the morning, the dark wind flowing through you, and all day long it is the only thing that makes sense: wind, that slides a hand under your boots on the pavement and carries; wind, that slices at the lips and cuts. In it we listen…

There is a section in my library for death and another for Irish history, a few shelves for the poetry of China and Japan, and in the center a row of imperturbable reference books, the ones you can turn to anytime, when the night is going wrong or when the day is full of empty…

1. Today I walk, find countless calla lilies. How anything grows its own perfect white and stays that way—unafraid of world. It is lovely, so I look. It doesn’t matter what it thinks of me. 2. This is what I’ve been given to look at. I never chose to be here— California gardens, riches. There…

for Mary Sorry for the tardiness of my response. I’ve been lost in thought, unable to reach you. Your message arrived, brown, brain-sized nut, stripped to its rough shell, my name and address singed on. I want you to know I read it carefully, held it to my ear and listened to the mystery that…

He showed me brochures for the last moment of my life. He had done an elaborate makeup job on his wrists, so it would look as if he had tried to commit suicide. He gave me a ring, bright as the eyes of a child on a stupid church trip. Our families threw advice at…

I knew a force lay hidden in the air that could raise this heat from only a spark, lick the sky and still be hungry. I lit a page of rolled up news and ran out back with arm upraised and stuck it under. It didn’t catch at first. I threw a cup of diesel…