Poetry

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…

Just after I had landed my first job— they needed busboys at the Mexican chain restaurant that opened where Lake crossed Route 17, an intersection known in town for being dangerous—we met. Among my new responsibilities was polishing the silverware, he said while pointing a dull butter knife at me. He plunged it in a…

1. Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, and so on to the ultimate loss—a battle, a world. In other words, the breeze from this butterfly’s golden wings could fan a tsunami in Indonesia or send a small chill…

A wolf whose eyes glow red and jaws close quick meets the voluptuous Miz Nude Bo-Peep beside a shepherd with a crooked stick: and, ever after, they enthrall lost sheep. The wolf prowls round the shed. Straw, timber, brick— he’ll blow through walls, smash every windowpane. But wait—he’ll cut the sheep a deal. It’s trick…

Some cruel entrepreneur glued jewels onto wings to prevent their broad, papery flowering, the ruby or sapphire or smoky opal hump wedged in an oval frame, its frail gold chain blunted with a pin, so the exotic beetle, living brooch, could plod its strict loop. Pinned to my mother’s monogrammed blouse, that insect circled her…

1. Eisenach, birthplace (in 1685) of J. S. Bach. Close-by, on a high hill, Schloss Wartburg, the Thuringian landgraves’ ancestral stronghold. Which also sheltered music, judging from Elisabeth’s aria in Act II of Tannhäuser, a paean addressed to the castle’s Great Hall as she waits for the Minnesänger to file in and join her. Music…

A year after your death, I leaned above My desk, and listened to gullshrieks rising off The shoreline I imagined—shapes of driftwood, Glistening sacs of jellyfish, whatever Washes in—page after page of days Misplaced in the leaden interim . . .                                                           One evening, I felt it before I saw the seam, the tremor Widen—felt…

In barracks, Grandma, did dust chafe your lips? The men played poker, the women played bridge. And guards, rifles, the chain of black sleek boots? The girls cut out dolls, ripped paper in skirts. Or towers, gleaming, plugged with silver barrels? The copperheads slid through tundra and thistles. My mother, born in camp, draining your…