Poetry

In memoriam: Irving Howe Hearing the news, we headed for this garden, a children’s picture book, a black-and-white movie turned to color for the Oz scenes.   We’d planned to take him here. In this arbor, crabapple trees enclose us like a vault, their branches splayed like nerve ends over us.   It is before…

These are the reminiscent lettuces, And girls with pockets full of teeth Will disappear in them, in fields of watered lettuce. They sing when no one watches them in lettuce. “Love what no one else would love. No one Else would do it.” They dot the far rows of lettuce, Scavengers, enamored of the lettuces:…

When I was white I came and went, a cycle of blood and moon and tide, hid nothing of gun-shape inside me, debated evil   with no one. I said: Bring me something handsome to eat and they did, that steak butter, you could spread it on bread. I said: Bring   me taxis. They…

Neighbors, please don’t     mind me this morning         at windows balling my fists   at the sun. Lowdown     bastards, imbeciles         & infidels, a tribunal   of jackasses behind     mirrored sunglasses         with satchels of loot—wait,   calm down, count to twenty     & take a few deep breaths.         You don’t…

The city is still the same handful of glances, Glimpses of alleyways like wounds laid open, Balconies of laundry drying, names of streets Unfolding in the smells of fishscale, kelp, And poverty . . .                           Across Fleet Landing, sheets Of blind-white glare seethe off the spires and stairflights Through me, through my sea-pitched, sea-numb…

War Relocation Center” in a Dream   A lotus is a lotus. A train is a train. No, this train is a lotus, this lotus is a train.   The petals are white swords. The engine a head of steam. No, petals are spumes of ash blooming from this train.   The bud opens to…

Work boots in the basement thrown against a wall. The garden dies in the mind— nasturtiums entwined on a chain-link fence. The gods he carried nothing but dried crusts. That vintage bottle on the table crushed more each time he hammers it.

So autumn comes to an end with these few wet sad stains Stuck to the landscape,                                        December dark Running its hands through the lank hair of late afternoon, Little tongues of the rain holding forth                                                                   under the eaves, Such wash, such watery words . . .   So autumn comes to this end,…