Poetry

Towering billboards line the Plaza of the History of Great Ideas. They're empty and maybe it's blessing. No more scratch your ass—walk around. No more wondering: is this tragic hayride a major or minor outing? And one could've said something so provocative once. The concession stand, for instance, was run by a tyrant. He beat…

When you were first born, your eyes were blue and you couldn't see but what you felt was real. In the crib you screamed against the bars and no one came and that was knowing. The milk pale blue from the mother's breast shone through your new skin. A lode of fear and hiding place…

I was happy once for nine days. My housekeeper found a novena for hopeless cases on her seat in church, a prayer to be recited every day for nine days, and she thought she might as well say it for me since I had been complaining of hard times. She apologized for calling me a…

Only the fluttering pages of a few songbooks left. At the bar, the large, gawky males idle over jigsaw puzzles: sailing ships in profile, sad steamers adrift on a wedge of unbelievable blue. Tired of running, the rugged womenfolk nodded off hours ago. Where else to dream on a chilly night, the planet hurtling down…

This is when you unloose what you know      she hit me      she hit me This day opens and its flowers like winter breaths lift as they open wider, into leopard paws, into baskets of snow. The sleeping world loosely rocks on its hinge. Now your hand drifts open and shut. Rise up childlike on the…

I climb the stairs to your loft. You open to me with a cold desirous stare which frightens me. You show me your toys musical instruments, clappers, mallets, drums electronic equipment. Rehearsal city, you say. You show me your room, your bed. Everything is brown. You give me tea. You play the music you have…

After fifteen-years, after surveyors dug up what they had buried, we learned that the neighbor's lilacs were really ours and you could take flowers before dark. Let's go out now, Mother, before tea and cut handfuls. Then while we fill jars with aspirins and ice, you can tell me that you memorized every back road…

The suitcase, deathly still by the door, sun-warm, waiting in the dusk-darkened corner. The cars coming and going there. Summer an endless usher of drugged voices, thunder, cold nights in the fan's path, water thin over the face, the dresser's black square. Then, quick as odor— rain on a jacket, steps in the foyer. In…

1. VIRGINIA BEACH Late air sweet and jagged with mosquitoes, ocean extending its deep hands along the shoreline. Bride's lace of surf, lace of mourning crossing its long wrists— Perhaps death is fine, as life is fine, and comes in      beautifully from the horizon. This is where Edgar Cayce came to peel the world back—…