Poetry

Nothing is like the theater. Backstage, with eighty children I fight through wastes of plastic bags to youthful refugees. They drop hairpins, lose their shirts or ask for biscuits, Play guessing games or scrap till they are needed. The oldest cries. The youngest, in a corner, Intent as God, smears blue above her eyes.  …

The cicadas again like kindling that won’t take. The struck match of some utopia we no longer remember                                                     the terms of— the rules. What was it was going to be abolished, what restored? Behind them the foghorn in the harbor, the hoarse announcements of unhurried arrivals, the spidery virgin-shrieks of gulls, a sideways sound, a…

He woke up in New York City on Valentine’s Day, Speeding. The body in the booth next to his was still warm, Was gone. He had bought her a sweater, a box of chocolate Said her life wasn’t working he looked stricken she said You’re all bent out of shape, accusingly, and when he She…

“The child plays at being not only a shopkeeper or teacher but also a windmill and a train.” —Walter Benjamin, “On the Mimetic Faculty” At dusk the ring of the horizon turned brown, folded open, then dropped lower, like grain. But there was no grain. And it was dawn again. The wind blew odd furrows…

The woman said yes she would go to Australia with him Unless he heard wrong and she said Argentina Where they could learn the tango and pursue the widows Of Nazi war criminals unrepentant to the end. But no, she said Australia. She’d been born in New Zealand. The difference between the two places was…

At first the angel was perfectly wingless, loitering out in the meadow below our summer place, gazing up at the sky. A kind of Christina without a home behind her. Whenever she was hungry, she’d sneak into our home and steal an apple or a peach from the walnut bowl. Once she cracked a tooth…

Pleasure is the widow, circulating. She walks and her dress unfolds like a stream folds in clear seams. The bright willow streams down the bank. Where she walks the stream flashes bright windows, a creed of windows. She weeps through the river and the changing flower of foam. Pleasure is the widow. So some pleasure…

The bloom was off the economic recovery. “I just want to know one thing,” she said. What was that one thing? He’ll never know, Because at just that moment he heard the sound Of broken glass in the bathroom, and when he got there, It was dark. His hand went to the wall But the…

   Ethna and I were eating scones and sipping espresso at the Café Arabica when I learned of my love affair with you. Everyone has been talking about it, though it came as news to me. Good news. I had no trouble believing every word of it.    True, I have no idea what you…