Poetry

The leaves made us think Of a letter trembling in someone’s hand. In fact, many letters in many hands, And then they no longer did. There was a bedraggled old woman Walking With two gray boards on her back Joined into a cross To cook her dinner with, And then, We were somewhere else.

A Mexican migrant worker was kept sedated in an Oregon mental hospital for two years because doctors couldn’t understand his Indian dialect. Hospital staffers ruled Adolfo Gonzales was mentally ill because “he couldn’t speak to us to tell us he wasn’t.” These are the words you did not have to tell them who you were,…

Is infinite, said my wife, Quoting Solomon, Which made me see stars, The vastness of the universe. The one who is not a fool, Like a sugar cube that fell in the sea. The one who is not a fool Like a tarantula On a slice of wedding cake— So I covered my ears.

Yet another Puerto Rican Buddhist. He wants to breathe in peace, while keeping his rice- and-beans cooking skills, his accent, his blue jeans from the Santana years, his wine and rum collections housed inside his head. Today’s lesson: fireflies know they’re grasshoppers’ illusory stars. And that Puerto Rico is only a comma in Time’s poem…

A tree spooked By its own evening whispers. Afraid to rustle, Just now Bewitched by the distant sunset Making a noise full of deep Misgivings, Like bloody razor blades Being shuffled, And then again the quiet. The birds too terror-stricken To make their own comment. Every leaf to every other leaf An apparition, A separate…

The anesthetist seems to bounce off the walls. It is very late. As if underground The trolley with my daughter crawls With her ruined appendix. Wide and blue The gowned anesthetist’s speech is strange. As he pats each wall, words flash from true. His accent is thick as the paint’s veined white On the glimmering…

“. . . the Muse guides mariners in the shape of bees.” —Philostrates Her wild cunning hypothesis: the Sirens in the Odyssey were bees. And I imagine two virgins, joined at the thorax— grounded, centered, perfumed— who could hum the Greeks’ ancient choruses, who knew all the lullabies, the waltzes, the songs a wife would…

Nothing is like the theater. Backstage, with eighty children I fight through wastes of plastic bags to youthful refugees. They drop hairpins, lose their shirts or ask for biscuits, Play guessing games or scrap till they are needed. The oldest cries. The youngest, in a corner, Intent as God, smears blue above her eyes.  …

“Flour is a fine thing.” —Nadezhda Mandel’shtam Bread we’ve all pissed away Stale crumbs the baby dances On sandwich she won’t eat now Vallejo’s nightmares semi Full colon hungers crackling Like electricity be dash Tween them a hungrier man If we survive moments self dash Abnegation like that We will elect ourselves to The pantheon…