Poetry

A man in the south of France flaps his elbows and dances with a female crane, who is the last of the Black-tails. He hoots and coos, and she lowers her long delicate neck. Yesterday the man had sunned and swum amid a swarm of nude swimmers in the Riviera’s cloudy waters, so that now…

When the first radio wave music escaped Earth’s ionosphere, it literally did become eternal. Music, in this century, has been converted from sound into the clarity of pure light. Radio has superseded the constraints of space. —Leonard Shlain, Art & Physics Imagine Vivaldi suddenly falling on the ears of a woman somewhere beyond Alpha Centauri,…

Somebody almost walked off with all my stuff               —Ntozake Shange at best you can say your judgment was tainted by movies and old expectations       Paris equals passion       n’est pas?   so why not ride                         the subway just this one                         night despite                         all the echoes of caution                         dancin :…

When the giant panda views another of her species through a window, in a mirror, does she feel a little less lonely? I smile when I see another couple like us, though of course they aren’t like us, except for the contrast between white skin, and black. The year I turned twelve the way we…

When the air is thin with frost I blow rings of ice smoke as I did when I was young and imagined myself grown and never answering to anyone. From smoke rings to pots that became helmets and tanks, I play-acted a world where color held no name and eyes were tears holding light. Without…

So much for the solid- gold musical taste of the age,                               upbeat, down and out, love- sick groans bawling from the suitcase-sized boom box riding the shoulder of a cholo in shades, webbed hairnet, flannel shirt buttoned to the neck in midsummer, pimp- strut rocking by on tip- toe past pairs of squat, unisex…

We meet     as always on the corner of dusk & dark & against that soubrettish tablet we step off in search of the invisible night that lurks inside of darkness like a well-kept secret or a lie. Wherever we are becomes a carnival, a fair of the heart with sidling glances at lust. We knock…

I got to know what was soft and where the hard parts were in that upholstered bedroom. Every headlight was a worry. I kept my clothes on as much as I could. It didn’t bother you. Even that time getting caught didn’t. You liked it. You said you loved me, but it was what I…

When you wash them do it gently with a mild soap and lightly swish. Silken, seamed, off-black, mist, dotted, patterned in some way, support, light support, sheer, nude, coal, reinforced toe, taupe, suntan, ivory, smoke, they’re in there now all crossed over through the small accumulation of bubbles which gather at the edges of your…