Poetry

My aunt was upset by lesbians: Her sister, her sister’s lover, in particular. She imagined them, I think, giving each other Head over and over, though from what I knew —And I knew plenty—that couple made love With roughly the same frequency As did Auntie and Uncle Snort. They All had plenty to worry about,…

for R. Voisine His father, two brothers, and me, we turned off our saws for a rest of water and cake. Thirsty, he stopped, walked over and the loader’s back gate yawned and slipped its catch, threw him down onto a fresh stump, still that pink-white wet. I scooped him up. Blood fell on the…

Still I am not sure which is most vivid— the love now risen from its previous absence, or the future loss it rides like a shadow, the eye’s after-image of a bright light gone. In any case, with its harrowing blades, this fertile line of love already draws through me a beautiful symmetry: The invisible,…

For one thing I’m glad the goal of enlightenment means being so utterly stupid as to actually slip out the door every morning & live. With no second-guessings, no poses, just this leaning & slouching the experts term hope. Because people like me aren’t guilty of laughing at the passing streets. I mean I believe…

Already pregnant, she writes her name and his, Lou and Mike, over the cloudy pictures in True Stories. Black-and-white pictures of a leggy woman (Lou) draped, the arching stem of her throat almost tears from her head, so thrown back with pounds of hair and a dark man’s (Mike’s) kisses. Done eating,  Mike scrubs the…

The elevator is full of the swim team. The swim team knows How many goldfish Will fit in a phone booth. The window and its attendant shadows Are not wise. They are an insult To the swim team, Which has God on its side. The swim team knows How to pull a knife on the…

We even breathed shyly, all the while envying everybody their courage & finesse. But either our nerve gave out, or we were much too patient, always over-rehearsed, like those old men, the frowners who spend hours fly casting in the park, practicing, each flick of their wrists erasing the memory of streams and flame-spotted trout….

    Althea kept a list of the things she could live without—perfumed soaps, clean rugs, cats. It was a long list. She added to it from scraps she wrote on when she thought of them. Every fortnight or so she gathered up the scraps and in her ancient and exquisite longhand added them to her…

No one owes us anything. We claim it’s mother and father. How can you live in this place? The floors are so dirty and it stinks. I sit waiting for the mailman. There’s a package he’s bringing. Why isn’t he here yet? The worm is alive. The apple tree, the coyote, the walnut, the beggar,…