Poetry

“I had known him as a child when he played guitar: thin, hyperactive; with a clear soprano then. Later, the golden curls had straightened and grown dark. He played nothing now but of a doubt so broad his family feared for him: Talent like that drives the nails in, they said, although it was the…

I had only one prayer, but it spread like lilies, a single flower duplicating itself over and over until it was rampant, uncountable. At ten I lay dreaming in its crushed green blades. How did I come by it, strange notion that the hard stems of rage could be broken, that the lilies were made…

Existence can only be justified from an aesthetic perspective. —Nietzsche When we come upon the hawk for the first time, I am reminded of the line by Cézanne, the landscape thinks itself in me then imagine a current of sunlight for the bird, the aerial pencil sketch of nearby meadows and woods, the light hysterical….

Even as a child I could induce it at will. I’d go to where the big rocks stayed cold in the woods all summer, and tea mind would come to me like water over stones, pool to pool, and in that way I taught myself to think. Green teas are my favorites, especially the basket-fired…

L. infantia, inability to speak I hear your infant voice again, unspooling on a tape made years ago— No, though it was paradise, I can’t, can’t go back to that room, filled with your rounded vowels, the sighs and crooning of a newborn child, bright syllables strung, like beads on a string, into meaningless meaning….

We were given these instruments after your birth: syringe, Tegaderm, Heparin flush. This morning, I found them behind the file cabinet. Dare I throw them out? I am a superstitious girl. When I stood in the parted door and gave you up for the scan, anesthetized, dye-injected, your one-year-old body sang its sweet, green galaxy…

At the end of the dark at the end of the hall, my older sister stood by the mirror, casting for her real face in a square of light. I was eight. Had she known that I was still awake, pillow doubled under to raise my head, she’d have screamed and slammed the bathroom door,…

It wasn’t lewd or revealing of anything round except my shoulders which Mother forever urged back with military brio, yellow—never my best color— a square of magenta for the bust, bought in the Village at mod, expensive Paraphernalia (what Grandpa called his bait and tackle; his paraphernalia). Did you know that store? Glossy white go-go…

Not Jack, but Jackie was the member of that 1950’s wedding entourage who mattered to my mother, Jackie, spoken plainly and in the intimate voice, who had that je ne sais quoi, that savoir faire, that swell sense of style, that wide and lovely face. So broad it bordered on the beautiful. And skirting the…