Poetry

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…

An insane bald homeless white man on a children’s bicycle rode over to where my girlfriend and I were walking and he said, “Couldn’t find a real woman?” My girlfriend is black. Okay, tell me—what does one do in this situation? The man must have been at least sixty, but he was very muscular, wearing…

That’s a cute-looking girl there in the sports section. A little flat-chested, but pretty. The caption says: “Bubba Day follows through on his way to victory in the Insurance Classic.” Wait a minute, is that a typo? No, what I thought was a mistake is really the truth. Her ponytail is really his bicep on…

In the mind there comes a moment when shadows fall back    like men from a gust of something, when the brain is light as a fly on your wrist— and in the jeweled eyes of that fly you see your own six-legged self white-shoed, dancing, being on parade— the gold tuba grown from your…

There is a danger in living; it is why we file our nails instead of our wrists; it is why we label things away. It’s why when we think of mass transit we think of concentration camps, we think of people packed like oysters in the little shells we’re allowed, the brine & hope of…

Polymorphous perverse, dolphins of both genders prefer sex-play with the human female. 1. Water begins from a wound in the hillside, a tear in the     clouds. There’s a tin cup no one cares has years of germs on its     icy rim. The water is sweeter than anything you will ever hold in    …

When we thought of the future it was wonderful & well-lit. The sky could hold anything. He chants about Beelzebub, Black Arnie & his mismatched angels, about supplicants & warblers that always tag along: a talisman against the learning the church leaves out. He is on one leg & braced, a shout that ignores its…

Through an open window of late summer evening a woman cries, Ah-ah-AH! Neighbors pause, blush perhaps, then go on with their homely chores, smiling to themselves. What do you do with this—another’s shameless, lonely ecstasy? Or your own? I put a tape of Mozart on to cover our confusion.

For six months each day at sunrise I’ve watched a woman in bright red trunks run past my window and each time I think of how as a boy I took my stance in front of the steamed mirror, my faded boxers safety-pinned proudly at the crotch and judged my body against all things that…