Poetry

  • from Orpheus and Eurydice

    If your gaze takes in the world a person’s a puny thing. If a person is all you see, the rest falls away and she becomes the world. But there’s another world into which a person can disappear. Then what remains? Only your word for her: Eurydice.   * She paused at the stone gates…

  • Another Imaginary Voyage

    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…

  • The Blue Castrato

    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…

  • The White Star

    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…

  • Atomic Bride

    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…

  • Breast/Fever

    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…

  • Offerings to an Ulcerated God

    Chelsea, Massachusetts “Mrs. López refuses to pay rent, and we want her out,” the landlord’s lawyer said, tugging at his law school ring. The judge called for an interpreter, but all the interpreters were gone, trafficking in Spanish at the criminal session on the second floor.   A volunteer stood up in the gallery. Mrs….

  • Service

    i. Do they hate each other, I wonder, she who will live on and he who is dying? I fill their bird feeder with safflower. Each dip of the orange pitcher scatters seed from its lip to the earth, in ecstasy. An arc. A small rain falls down. Bruised light a nacre over everything. My…

  • On Worms, and Being Lucky

    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…