Poetry

for X— When cabbalists declare Each deed we do affects Beings in other worlds, My thought turns round to sex,   As it inclines to do, As needle to true north, Considering our case, Weighing it back and forth.   What if we had undressed That chaste July, and what If we were being watched…

i. To His Savior in Christ If I did not, as I do, know well to love you first, I’d love my voice instead, cause you to yield the throne whose impossibly precious batting I could sing all day and never start to know—it is blasphemy or worse even to think it (Domine, me— ut…

Inside the White Star it was warm, ironed clothes, and humming revolution of unsteady washer-dryers. It was whirling blur of red black blue yellow that Beatrice watched like a TV, next to her lover.   Last night she’d looked into lighted windows bitterly, as if she’d been evicted, things thrown out on the sidewalk, cracked…

for Andre Foxxe A good show Starts in the Dressing room   And works its way To the stage. Close the door,   Andre’s cross- Dressing, what A drag. All   The world loves A bride, something About those gowns.   A good wedding Starts in the Department store   And works its way Into…

My new breast is two months old, gel used in bicycle saddles for riders on long-distance runs, stays cold under my skin when the old breast is warm; catalogue price, $276. My serial number, #B-1754, means some sisters under the skin. My new breast my new breast is sterile, will never have cancer.   Once…

The leaves made us think Of a letter trembling in someone’s hand. In fact, many letters in many hands, And then they no longer did. There was a bedraggled old woman Walking With two gray boards on her back Joined into a cross To cook her dinner with, And then, We were somewhere else.

A Mexican migrant worker was kept sedated in an Oregon mental hospital for two years because doctors couldn’t understand his Indian dialect. Hospital staffers ruled Adolfo Gonzales was mentally ill because “he couldn’t speak to us to tell us he wasn’t.” These are the words you did not have to tell them who you were,…

Is infinite, said my wife, Quoting Solomon, Which made me see stars, The vastness of the universe. The one who is not a fool, Like a sugar cube that fell in the sea. The one who is not a fool Like a tarantula On a slice of wedding cake— So I covered my ears.

Yet another Puerto Rican Buddhist. He wants to breathe in peace, while keeping his rice- and-beans cooking skills, his accent, his blue jeans from the Santana years, his wine and rum collections housed inside his head. Today’s lesson: fireflies know they’re grasshoppers’ illusory stars. And that Puerto Rico is only a comma in Time’s poem…