Poetry

While you suffered I measured flour for a birthday cake, the bleached grinding of wheat flowing from a tin scoop like water, like cold air I split walking in winter woods, snow a long white apron flung against the fissured maples, the smooth trunks of birches. While you wept I sang, the candles flared to…

Morning let you down like a broken promise. Noon with its bright clothes stood in your way. Now it is evening, though, your favorite time, The kiss of the word feeling good in your mouth. It is sad to think of people you have failed, Who thought, early on, you lived up to your word,…

A crow settles in at the bar, and tells one crow story after another, all hard as his beak. He scatters out corn, brass cartridges, a penny, blue glass, a car key, and a ring. He orders a beer, using it to chase down shots of dark glances. Around midnight the crow flies over us,…

i. Displaced Persons Out on the street the children are playing soldier. It’s the end of the century and still they play soldier. Let’s be unfair. Blame them for the toasted corpses, The orphans, widows, and amputees. One aims A broomstick, another a plastic missile launcher, And the little ones on the lawn roll over,…

That night we drink too many sad stories and go to bed upset with attempted matrimony. After undressing and before making love it’s necessary to not speak of the dream where we become so entangled that I have to get out of bed as her and go to the mirror, wanting to write a note,…

When the dove of whom there is no memory fell into the sea We were uncreated, oh yeah, we were speechless before the sky. There were no words to be sung on the water without edges. Lord had shown his preference for his serpents and his mosses.   Into depths we drowned, the familial and…

Your daffodils rose up and collapsed in their yellow bodies on the hillside garden above the brick patio you laid out in sand, squatting with pants pegged and face masked like a beekeeper’s against the black flies. Buttercups circle the planks of the old wellhead, bright boisterous convergence, this May while your silken gardener’s body…

It happened like this: he lived in a palace which was also a prison. You understand how nothing is ever simple. He had built a labyrinth for the king’s monster son,   a great service, which came with a secret. One for the king, one in the builder’s head. Be reasonable, could the king ever…

I call my father on the phone it’s twenty years today My mother died and his life turned sorry And he’s filing his fishing hooks smoothing down the barbs He’s going to throw back every bass in Minnesota When Grandfather died death stood way over there In a gray sharkskin suit directing the mourners When…