Poetry

But did we not Mint our excuse to sin, And nurture it to our advantage? Now here, now there, Like drops on a pond Shot by the needlegun From the silt to the surface; now The mechanism of our thought Leaps in reverse Like that hid engine of the waterworld. Philosophers all, then we pray:…

Not only what lasts, but what applies over time also. So maybe, for all my believing, not you, on either count. Any more than this hand where it falls, here, on your body; or than your body itself, however good sometimes at making—even now, in sleep—a point carry. Not this morning, either, that under the…

The history of my country is in every link of chains at the foot of Boukman’s copper statue overlooking a dusty town at the depth of despair with candlelights of anger burning in every tired palm. Low black clouds converted light into darkness, the man with a fat cigar stands in front of the black…

Far from Puebla and Michoacán men wake to pick peaches and beans. Light rolls out its bolt of cloth. Yard sales, craft shows, the six-pack loneliness of rural towns. On either side of I-95, going to Sonora, butterflies don’t care who drives more than fifty-five for a cheap pint of faith in the jackpots. Mars…

The black uncombed wig with stiff grotesque braids sits atop his broad and pockmarked forehead; and his grip on the dull tomahawk is almost woman- like. Yes, Father Scarmark’s winsome eyes and slouched spine do not befit a proven warrior. But the beaded American flag designs on the bayonet scabbard symbolize breaths stolen from German…

This time each year nothing stirs. The slow earth clings to its few known elements. Its moon lights only this tenth of the century. Autumn’s madness has left the trees. Winter’s sad mists, too. Between seasons, always waiting on the window’s other side, irregular shadows filter the already fine winds in which a stranger might…

1. There exists a future when green trees will be extinct. In our ingenuity artificial tree factories—A.T.F.’s—     will flourish. Far ahead I see myself walking under one, and I grow uneasy at the thought of chunks of painted concrete swaying in the man-made breeze from bark-textured iron rods. Don’t worry, says the regional safety…

For so long the hillside shone white, the white of white branches laden, the sky more white, the river unmoved. And when the first stirrings started underneath, the hollowing subtle, unpredictable, rotten crust gave way— ice water up to the ankle! She turned from her work and shook her wet foot. The buds had broken….

1. For the one on top, polished, sartorial, but abstracted as Lincoln on his Memorial, fingers tapping the armrests, or flapping his newspaper, time at this connecting stop slows like winter on a mink-oiled Little Leaguer’s glove . . . When each shoe is stripped, finally, of its upper layers of the world, a silver-…