Poetry

Nights standing in a field or sleeping under the stars, I sense that one of those pebbles of light must be signaling me from deep space. I know this is no more than my own longing cast like fishing line into the depths of another kind of ocean, and that my aloneness is reflected in…

I thought you were through, but like good sex, you keep coming back. Miles, what’s up with Doo-Bop? When I listen to you, I hear a car crash, a voice reaching climax, a flock of birds with metal wings aiming for the moon. Your ears danced, when street movements float through your window. Hip-Hop, Rap….

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….