Poetry

Right now the men put aside     their composing sticks and settle by the hellbox     chatting in groups that never seem to vary     from day to day. Naturally I’m anxious to fit     in naturally, to be considered one amongst     metal men and composers. I hesitate on the edge of     the…

The bass we catch is too big with years, its dark stripes notched and wavering like a cut trunk’s rings. We drag it over the gunnel, stand back, and no one will touch it, at first. The children cry and want it gone. And when we do let it go, it is not out of…

“La poésie vit d’insomnie perpétuelle.” —Rene Char There’s a sickness in me. During the night I wake up & it’s brought a stain into my mouth, as if an ocean has risen & left back a stink on the rocks of my teeth. I stink. My mouth is ugly, human stink. A color like rust…

I was told to lie down in the cart, and I did. My braided hair mixed with straw under me to catch the blood I seeped. Then she covered me with heavy furs and brush. The night was stark and cold, the stars close and multiplying like cells as we creaked along under them a…

Saturday, Eighth and Broadway, a dozen turtles the color of crushed mint try for the ruby rim of a white enamel bowl on the sidewalk, wet jade jewel cases climbing two or three times the length of their bodies toward heaven till the slick sides of the bowl send them sliding back into their brothers’…

She is not an ordinary Baby, but a lump of coal. Grown-ups glance at her And look away. Only the children Stare. Their parents tell them Not to point.   When Angeline’s mother Wheels her stroller Into the bakery Everyone falls silent. When she pushes it Outside again, raindrops slide Right off her baby’s face….

The dirt-and-grease-and-brown-rose-rot-Community-     Garden-woman- out-of-the-rice-paddy-with-Toltec-baby-on-the-back party begins, good morning, like a tiger, a lullaby on the     dirge-cusp, and is gorgeous, not ever sitting one minute, not a moment     insouciant, and absolutely lagging badly in the calm department, carrying     life around in an iron handcart with peony, and a thousand people a    …

The women in my family were full of still water; they churned out piecework as quietly as glands. Plopped in America with only the wrong words hobbling their tongues, they liked one thing about the sweatshop, the glove factory, and it was this: you didn’t have to say much. All you had to do was…

I imagined every creature before I spoke with fatal names.                                You were the leopard and goat.                   You were the kestrel and loon.                   I had the power of speech because of you.                            Ten thousand things came into being from a single form that was not a form.                                     I made no sense…