Poetry

“Dear Muzz,” I wrote, the summer I was ten from a seedy nature camp in the Poconos with cows and calves, huge geese, some half-wild ponies —heaven for the urban savage I was then— “I have to do this letter to get breakfast. Kiss Kerry for me. I milked a cow named Clover.” (Kerry, my…

A bird sings from the tree. The birds sing sending waves of desire—and I stand on my roof waiting for a randomness to storm my days. I stand on my roof filled with the longing that sings its way out of the bird. And I am afraid that my call will break me, that the…

My friend says yes to this, yes to that,     Lies in bed all day saying answers, His life reduced each hour to this: water,       Paper-thin sheath of flesh, various cancers That he allows, even befriends.     Some of us will die of greedier   Diseases, some by their own skeletal hands.    …

The splendid coat that wrapped the favored son In fevered dreams of adulation And turned his brothers’ hearts from jealousy To rage (Behold, this dreamer comes)—though long Since rent and soaked in blood, dried and decomposed— Arrives through the long centuries over Sea and land, the unexpected birthright Of this particular girl. Its separate Magic…

for X— When cabbalists declare Each deed we do affects Beings in other worlds, My thought turns round to sex,   As it inclines to do, As needle to true north, Considering our case, Weighing it back and forth.   What if we had undressed That chaste July, and what If we were being watched…

i. To His Savior in Christ If I did not, as I do, know well to love you first, I’d love my voice instead, cause you to yield the throne whose impossibly precious batting I could sing all day and never start to know—it is blasphemy or worse even to think it (Domine, me— ut…

Inside the White Star it was warm, ironed clothes, and humming revolution of unsteady washer-dryers. It was whirling blur of red black blue yellow that Beatrice watched like a TV, next to her lover.   Last night she’d looked into lighted windows bitterly, as if she’d been evicted, things thrown out on the sidewalk, cracked…

for Andre Foxxe A good show Starts in the Dressing room   And works its way To the stage. Close the door,   Andre’s cross- Dressing, what A drag. All   The world loves A bride, something About those gowns.   A good wedding Starts in the Department store   And works its way Into…

My new breast is two months old, gel used in bicycle saddles for riders on long-distance runs, stays cold under my skin when the old breast is warm; catalogue price, $276. My serial number, #B-1754, means some sisters under the skin. My new breast my new breast is sterile, will never have cancer.   Once…