Poetry

  • And When I Awoke

    And when I awoke, I saw that I was gone. Just like that, the woman Ithought I knew, gone into the morning like the mockingbird’s song.After all these years, it was a bit of a surprise, even though I had seen itcoming, the way you see a train approaching from afar, crawling alongthe tracks, silent…

  • Last Words to My Soul

    After Hadrian Go, little sister,Flesh-flap peeledFrom blistered heel, Yellow pellicleSkimmed with a forkOff scalded milk. Where will you go,How far on wind-whistleTo marrow within a creature Not yet bornWhen I become no longerYour bodied brother? Vanishing twin, forever young,No reason to mournAs worms unfasten my tongue.

  • Upon Passing by the Mirror

    Translated by Katherine M. Hedeen and Victor Rodríguez Núñez each morning I wonder at my face:the same as always! Shouldn’t we reach the dawnwith face changed?After a new wordour lips should have a different feel! Only the beloved manages such a miracleface sheds featuresbefore the vision of the only otherwho creates it. Oh death that…

  • Final Poem for Forgiveness

    —worth it?My soul looks back and wondershow I left behind   that tether, which, a burden so long,had become a life more truethan my memory of having been without it: a friend saying, “Ilove you, but not enough,” then nevertrying toward enough or letting me go. The soul says “Go” and I followthat voice offthe edgeless…

  • Windfall

    Objects heavy enough to break us hangfrom the thinnest of threads. A stray breezeand down they come. But they say that spider silkis five times stronger than steel, which might bewhy spiders look so buff. I know that I wouldn’twant to run into one in a dark alley, or any alleyfor that matter, though matter…

  • Complacent

              Maybe on the shore of the lakewhere eagles live and breathe again,swooping over toddlers frightening all,I sought a rock that was flat,one to skip over the calm surface of the water to impress the child. And maybe the rock had fallen fromanother planet, tumbled, burned itself to a size human though still full of…

  • Andy Warhol hides a third eye

    Translated by Ming Di  With the key of paintbrushhe opens another door;he asks a flower to invite people to a waltz. Light dazzles the dance floor. To the other end of the realm of dreamshe captures the poet John Giorno, sleeping. What game is it, what strangeness, that experiences time?What is time?A capsule? Frozen in…

  • Safety Plan

    Imagine yourself a sequoia, down to the roots, El Niñoshaking the leaves. You want to say invade instead of shake,but that doesn’t feel safe. Roots like those, they stay in the earth: so keep your breathvisual. Paint until it feels right, even if Oregon smokefloats across the Rockies to scent your hair. Your insides twist…