Poetry

Innocent and earnest, good at marathons, the surgeon believed in his hands; he said he’d cut the tumor out, a convoluted unnatural thing wrapping its tentacles around the brain’s little house. Nothing more than architecture, then he paused: he knew about the maze, the puzzle. He put on his white clothes; over his entire being…

Once mistaken for a man I began to dress like one. Tall, broad-shouldered, hair cropped close, I could wear seersuckers, double-breasted pinstripes, disguised, free to go anywhere I pleased. But I rarely spoke, and was the only woman my rich, old neighbor would eat with. After a day’s shopping for mission oak in SoHo, Brooklyn’s…

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…

Do it instinctively, like washing your hands or fumbling for your glasses on the night table in the morning, even though, for a small ritual, it is complicated, a minefield of subtleties, an act of aspiration, self-hatred, theatrics. Stand before the full-length mirror on your closet door. You are dressed already, though your hair is…

My bathroom mirror is a window with a sash I could throw open if it were not painted shut. Above it hangs a transparent pane high enough to frame the sky. Usually I forget this, as in the evening while putting on my makeup I am surprised by a streak of orange or zigzag of…

The captain said over the loudspeaker, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Los Angeles. There is no hope.” Each step a search for balance with my friend, here for the first time, beside me in his loose pants and splayfooted saunter, gliding over the sidewalk slabs uprooted by trees or earthquakes on which I’ve stumbled all…

I am not— opened or closed— what you expected, o heart. Or would you without me have thought to throw open the flooding and roar, to step through the lion’s gold pelt? have thought that the passionate glass is the body? and this life, the one life you wanted? Wanted, meaning neither lacked, nor desired,…

“She propped her false leg up in the corner . . .” my spiritual advisor says when a strong man comes into the room you flutter your eyelashes & hike up your skirts when a strong man commands your heart flutters skips a beat and you do as you wish ghandi and dr king called…

As if the porous bag had been dipped once, twice, once more in the summer’s water, then set aside. Halfway between sleep and waking, I took it between my lips. And though the earth is everywhere terrible and cruel, the heart diamond flashed out once, twice, and once again the semaphore-reply it cannot help but…