Poetry

That night we drink too many sad stories and go to bed upset with attempted matrimony. After undressing and before making love it’s necessary to not speak of the dream where we become so entangled that I have to get out of bed as her and go to the mirror, wanting to write a note,…

When the dove of whom there is no memory fell into the sea We were uncreated, oh yeah, we were speechless before the sky. There were no words to be sung on the water without edges. Lord had shown his preference for his serpents and his mosses.   Into depths we drowned, the familial and…

Your daffodils rose up and collapsed in their yellow bodies on the hillside garden above the brick patio you laid out in sand, squatting with pants pegged and face masked like a beekeeper’s against the black flies. Buttercups circle the planks of the old wellhead, bright boisterous convergence, this May while your silken gardener’s body…

It happened like this: he lived in a palace which was also a prison. You understand how nothing is ever simple. He had built a labyrinth for the king’s monster son,   a great service, which came with a secret. One for the king, one in the builder’s head. Be reasonable, could the king ever…

I call my father on the phone it’s twenty years today My mother died and his life turned sorry And he’s filing his fishing hooks smoothing down the barbs He’s going to throw back every bass in Minnesota When Grandfather died death stood way over there In a gray sharkskin suit directing the mourners When…

A knot of string, crossed sticks, a dab of ink— can’t any work begin as a passionate doodling? So here is another of his constructions: a wooden   cow, but so skillful even the bull was tricked. You see, one must reckon with the jaded boredom of queens. During the drawn-out days, she lusted  …

I love to find a door. Like the spinal tap— above the draped fetal curve, you work the trocar inwards. Dowser, boatman, auger, bore. Every surface has its opening, even bone. Steel finds fossa, penetrates. That give, as the needle enters dura. Slide out the central metal filament, it rings, and the invisible emerges, drop…

Never discount what began his wanderings. In Athens he was the greatest craftsman. So much work he had to hire his nephew to help him. But his nephew had his gift   and soon people claimed the nephew’s gift was greater than the uncle’s. If the uncle built with bronze, the nephew built with gold….

for my great-grandfather We ran from a home                                   we never saw again. Saw nothing                                               remain ours. My arm shot               from my body. My wife’s broken neck. Our son burned                                 into a wing of smoke. A peeled face boiling with flies.                                             A man tearing his gangrened leg off              with his…