Poetry

The Mistaken Nymph

It was only the marvelous gravity of your attention, That weighed me down, that made me seem self-delighted, Sunk like the moon in a mandarin’s cup of reflections, But truly I was suggestible as the morning. When you laced wings on your shoulders, birds rippled over My smile; when you hunted and crimsoned Into a…

The Other Girls in Lettuce

These are the reminiscent lettuces, And girls with pockets full of teeth Will disappear in them, in fields of watered lettuce. They sing when no one watches them in lettuce. “Love what no one else would love. No one Else would do it.” They dot the far rows of lettuce, Scavengers, enamored of the lettuces:…

When I Was White

When I was white I came and went, a cycle of blood and moon and tide, hid nothing of gun-shape inside me, debated evil   with no one. I said: Bring me something handsome to eat and they did, that steak butter, you could spread it on bread. I said: Bring   me taxis. They…

Ogoni

Neighbors, please don’t     mind me this morning         at windows balling my fists   at the sun. Lowdown     bastards, imbeciles         & infidels, a tribunal   of jackasses behind     mirrored sunglasses         with satchels of loot—wait,   calm down, count to twenty     & take a few deep breaths.         You don’t…

Blue

See my colors fall apart? Green to yellow with just one shade gone, the changing tints of your sun-struck eyes, if there were sun. Today the prism held to mine’s   a prison, locking in the light. In one of those mirrors the colors are true. In one of these pictures the pigment’s my own….

Letters

“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…

Heartsong

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…