Poetry

Two kinds of sand. One heavy, gritty, That falters moodily under your toes, like custard; The other, shiny weedy ribs, and further,   Out of sight, the standstill sea. You tramp along In sunbonnet and spade, summer’s regalia. You choose a gray snake’s nest, slice into it,   And yes, there are lugworms, and you…

1 Honey’s sweetness thins in steaming tea; a drop of honey   thickens to amber on the pantry counter. Oh, the sweetening dank, the dark   I inhale: come on the sheets on which my lover naps.   A rolled-up paper uncoils in a whisper: come is a rose is a star is a monster….

She had strong views on Mrs. Humphry Ward, The Brontës, poor souls, women called George, Novelists known as A Lady.                                                   There was always An edginess. Whenever we went too far, Children or parent, she’d flare Oh you Fanthorpes! As if at some foreign breed.   She lost some magic when she married us….

She was my Sunday school teacher when I was just seven and eight. He was the newly hired pastor,   an albino, alarming sight with his transparent eyelashes and mouse-pink skin that looked like it   might hurt whenever she caressed his arm. Since Eva was her name, to my child’s mind it made great…

Sprawled on the back of a flatbed truck we cradled hoes, our minds parceling rows of cotton to be chopped by noon. Dawn stuck in the air. Blackbirds rang the willows.   Ahead, a horse trailer stretched across the road. Braced by youth and lengths of summer breeze we didn’t give a damn. We’d be…

“Si la uva está hecha de vino, quizá nosotros somos las palabras que cuentan lo que somos.” —Eduardo Galeano, El libro de los abrazos for Jane Miller It’s the mind that marshals everything into neat sequence in retrospect—subject, verb, predicate—fooling us into believing words don’t dig their tangled roots in us. But rooting around we…

When, how far back? When I played in a formal park, Grandmother watching from a bench, the chalky whiteness of the gravel glistening in the sun wiping away all that passed before me, indistinct summonings in the blaze, by contrast the deep shade from trees so dark I ran out from there fast as I…

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…

Chrome made echoes of the room. He closed the door. It closed again, in accidental mirrors, warping     On the cylinders for cotton, Gauze, and was comical, not comical.   He closed the door, and let me watch him with his hands.     I watched him wash his impressive hands In his office. Did I…