Poetry

At the hem of horizon a distant armada of cars is gnawing its way through the chop of a meadow going like Columbus toward the end of the world under banner of no return. I dip my brush into black. Over a lip I build a black mustache, a small dense thundercloud, scented with rum,…

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…

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…

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….