Poetry

This empty feeling that makes me fearful I’ll disappear the minute I stop thinking May only mean that beyond the kitchen window, in the dark, The minions of the past are gathering, Waiting for the dishes to be cleared away So they can hustle supper into oblivion.   This feeling may only mean that supper’s…

—And yet this great wink of eternity   October was what it had already become when I entered the     walled graveyard, the air golden and remote in the last minutes before evening. A bedstand and springs made     the gate, pulled aside, and the stones faced the sunset, all those not overturned, flung    …

How charitable to call it fruit, when almost nothing inside it can be eaten. Just the gelatin that thinly rinds the unpalatable seed. The rest of it all pith, all bitter, hardly a meal, even for a thin girl. But enough, at least in the myth, to be what ties Persephone half the year to…

The world will be no different if the twin sisters Disputing now in the linen aisle of Kaufman’s Resolve their difference about table napkins, Whether the color chosen by one is violet Or lavender or washed-out purple. No different, But that’s no reason to deem the talk insignificant. It’s important for people to make distinctions,…

They left her alone; it was what she wanted. The bay waters had not been so secret for a long while, their great     labor quiet. She rowed over the calm of the ebb to an island of birds—heron,     cormorant, egret waiting in the tall mangroves, placid and self-contained, as if she alone were…

While you suffered I measured flour for a birthday cake, the bleached grinding of wheat flowing from a tin scoop like water, like cold air I split walking in winter woods, snow a long white apron flung against the fissured maples, the smooth trunks of birches. While you wept I sang, the candles flared to…

Morning let you down like a broken promise. Noon with its bright clothes stood in your way. Now it is evening, though, your favorite time, The kiss of the word feeling good in your mouth. It is sad to think of people you have failed, Who thought, early on, you lived up to your word,…

A crow settles in at the bar, and tells one crow story after another, all hard as his beak. He scatters out corn, brass cartridges, a penny, blue glass, a car key, and a ring. He orders a beer, using it to chase down shots of dark glances. Around midnight the crow flies over us,…

i. Displaced Persons Out on the street the children are playing soldier. It’s the end of the century and still they play soldier. Let’s be unfair. Blame them for the toasted corpses, The orphans, widows, and amputees. One aims A broomstick, another a plastic missile launcher, And the little ones on the lawn roll over,…