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…
See my colors fall apart? Green to yellow with just one shade gone, the changing tints of your sun-struck eyes, if there were sun. Today the prism held to mine’s a prison, locking in the light. In one of those mirrors the colors are true. In one of these pictures the pigment’s my own….
“Dear Muzz,” I wrote, the summer I was ten from a seedy nature camp in the Poconos with cows and calves, huge geese, some half-wild ponies —heaven for the urban savage I was then— “I have to do this letter to get breakfast. Kiss Kerry for me. I milked a cow named Clover.” (Kerry, my…
A bird sings from the tree. The birds sing sending waves of desire—and I stand on my roof waiting for a randomness to storm my days. I stand on my roof filled with the longing that sings its way out of the bird. And I am afraid that my call will break me, that the…
My friend says yes to this, yes to that, Lies in bed all day saying answers, His life reduced each hour to this: water, Paper-thin sheath of flesh, various cancers That he allows, even befriends. Some of us will die of greedier Diseases, some by their own skeletal hands. …
The splendid coat that wrapped the favored son In fevered dreams of adulation And turned his brothers’ hearts from jealousy To rage (Behold, this dreamer comes)—though long Since rent and soaked in blood, dried and decomposed— Arrives through the long centuries over Sea and land, the unexpected birthright Of this particular girl. Its separate Magic…
Probably God laughs at us, down here, entranced As, to quiet us, He tosses down another season, And we ooh and ah—like infants silenced By the jangling of keys above a playpen— At the all-effacing green or white or gold, Or even something small: a stem, a robin, A brittle smattering of stars across a…
translated from the Ukrainian by Lisa Sapinkopf and the author It could be dawn. The light, crumpled like sheets. The ashtray full. A shadow multiplies on four walls. The room is empty. No witnesses. But someone was here. A moment ago twin tears shimmered On polished wood (Did a couple live here?) In the armchair…
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