Poetry

What are the sounds that crowd the path And linger above the unmown field? Do you hear? —The winds of heaven are talking In the language of the heart. “June, June,” They say. “June. The lilacs are gone.” Wonderful things are weary of me: The groaning meteors on the August road; The pressed grasses where…

after “Farmhouse in Auvers with Two Figures” Talk about modern. The roof as flat as the sky, as the people. Forget Cézanne. Just look at this. And the shape of the roof: a fish, a car, a revolver. And the bushes like green fire, and the bush which seems to be growing out of the…

Ned loved Betsy, a blond waitress who lived in the suburbs. Only Betsy was in love with Peter, the race-car mechanic, who had muscles and a black Corvette, and wore a cross inside his T-shirt. But Peter was half-crazy over Anne, his     beautiful X- lover, who said, “You’re nothing but a loser,” and left…

One spring night, at the end of my street God was lying in wait. A friend and I were sitting in his new sedan like a couple of cops on surveillance, shooting the breeze to pass the time, chatting up the daydreams, the raw deals, all the woulda-coulda-shoulda’s, the latest “Can you believe that?” As…

The girl in a blue dress is standing on pink tile and gazing back at the artist as if looking through him for a place to rest. The day is brilliant with Mediterranean light Modigliani fled for the gravity of dark hotels, human throats elongated like sunflowers on the back streets of Paris, barefoot girls—this…

She has always been clever and poor,        Especially here off the Yugoslav Train on a platform of dust. Clever was        Her breakfast of nutmeg ground in water In place of rationed tea. Poor was the cracked        Cup, the missing bread. Clever are the six Handkerchiefs stitched to the size of a scarf        And knotted at…

In a backwards accident, Men cutting the old furnace Out to make room for oil Find the wedding band that Slipped, in February Nineteen twenty-four, Down the heat vent and melted To a coal. It was the coldest Month of the year my mother Was born, and The Captain Sat quiet while his wife, Her…

Your husband’s laugh, a glass of grenadine.     You greet the guests, steer coats onto your arms. Ice rattles the kitchen: he’s mixing drinks.     You stand where you can keep an eye on him. One measured glance at me, your face a smooth     storm, and I know whatever I’d say—vague murmurings in one…

The weird thing about the place was the speed of light— eight, nine miles an hour, tops. Isweartagod! It was beautiful, though, the way it felt slowing over you like a balmy breeze—light slow enough to catch in a, in a cup, light you could smear on a slice of bread like jam, light you…