Poetry

Strong Stars

Mottled grouse peck      up gizzard stones            before the first snow— seasons move on      as if the human heart were not            infinitely fragile. The sow bear's stained snout lifts,      sniffs the wind, then bows            to claws raking in stems, berries, rasping leaves.      A twelve-year-old, pleased, tells her aunt            I kissed a boy…

Portrait, Age Seven

It's not the wave that will devour you, arms and braids and all. Not even the stranger you won't look at in the shiny car. Not the topography of deserts, where you follow streambeds through the night, gobbling up the stars like sugar, ready to break the moon in half. Not even the mountain that…

The Weatherman

My house was a house of winds, and my father was of the wind, and we were of the earth and we were torn by him, we were stripped by him, by the bellows of his body, by the twisting of his voice coming shaking, elemental, before the kitchen table where we sat like stones…

Black Wasp

It buzzes over my head and enters the wood near the roof. I paint the wooden deck with red and move out of the way, drops of paint like blood after its wings, like a trace of what I knew when it first stung me, years ago, made me dance like the thief of murals,…

The Coast of Texas

If it's appendicitis, you're in trouble out here on the Isla de Malhado. Despite bright stars there are disturbances. It's three o'clock in the morning. Ashore on the Isla de Malhado the shipwrecked Spanish came to no good end. It's three o'clock in the morning. If it's not an emergency, go back to bed. The…

Christmas in Taos

The tree was the tallest spruce Still standing at the edge of the meadow Just down the road from the trailer; He'd dragged it back and set it up In the metal stand, leaving just enough room Between the tip of the spruce and the ceiling For the foil star. She'd baked a few dough…