Poetry

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…

It was older than the red barns, older than the frog pond for the cattle, than the road up Clark Hill, and the live oak colonnade leading to the rich man's brasses. Older too than ox blood and the idea of honor, or the dream of dominance. It was a stillness of light pouring in,…

On the Schuylkill Expressway, in the midst of a snarl of traffic, a truck from N.Y.C. pulled up alongside, with red filigree appearing through a film of grit in swirls like an ice cream sundae: “Coconut Don Fu Delight,” the fading billboard explained, evoking “tasteless bean curd with a white chewy sweetness of caramelized coconut,”…

The gym is closed, locked for the night. Through the windows, a quiet beam from the streetlights lies across center court. The darkness wraps itself around the trophies, lies softly on the coach’s desk, settles in the corners. A few mice scratch under the stands, at the door of the concession booth. The night wind…

Water as green as the pair of pickerel nibbling on the matter raised by my feet. The bottom: mulch, scrap limbs, snowmelt springs, and nothing too large or deep. Drift across, flat on your back, a mote. “One, two, three,” says mother to her boy as she heaves him by his foot over her shoulder,…

She is all definition, the woman, her summer Dress pleated with sweat. In the firm prow of her belly, in the hold Her cargo settles In, as if to stay. When it comes she will be flat Which is herself again, Another. Outside dry grasses nudge each other as if to say Lie still again,…

3. While I was living in Greece, my girlfriend in America had an affair with a Greek boy, a biology student named Vassilis, who was renting a room in the same house as her. Sweet-tempered, flabby, inexpert, he made her feel at ease. He was gone when I got back, but I squeezed it out…

They kill them like flies over there he had slurred on the bus full of drunk marines going back to Las Pulgas. Like flies. Corpsmen, he was talking about. Six months later I was a replacement, saw coffins being loaded onto transports on the airstrip coming in. Lived through the first firefight, the second; had…