The truck in the passing lane flings a stone squarely between my eyes in driving rain: November surprise. Arms of the windshield wiper flail like railroad crossing signs all the way to Seattle. I am leaving behind the scattered ash and the widow's double bed. Alone behind the wheel, I am comforted by old convent…
Six months later Sandra was found Murdered in a ditch. Lying With the blood Leaves. Scattered dirt Of Oregon. Four of us fucking A cheap motel on The limes of Van Buren. Then we Switched. Sandra slips On the wet tile Floor. These flakes Melt…
for Chris Benfey Before sleep last night I lay there in a reverie over L.A., and dreamt of it all night and put off getting up for fear it would go away. All my fears of flying dissipated at the thought of cruising in the air to Los Angeles. I was happy there. I said…
Retrieving forgotten coins from my Calvin Kleins— soggy poems in the pockets—I said with a native's pride, untangling my jeans from blue arms of a work shirt: Tomorrow I fly west with the wigeons and whistling ducks for a taste of summer. She looked up, folded the negligee, slinky as Diamond Lil's: But…
1. This bottlebrush tree (a green clash for the sparrows) Struck me to the rock with one hollow eye Of an indented knot The butte had taken the light Which reappeared in winter branches And voltage wires hung at half-mast. All of this being one version of the past. 2. When I'm thinking of the…
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…
We truckers are full of grease. We thrive on grease. That is, while we're young. And we get old awful fast. But most truckers on Highway 81 stop in for Ma Black's biscuits and gravy. She makes her own biscuits and serves them up with lots of her special milk gravy with big chunks of…
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…
Had he been naked as he skipped shivering out of the waves we would not have known he was so poor. But he was not naked. He wore around his hips an exhausted pair of castoff underwear gathered up at the hip, secured with the wire twist from some tourist's loaf of bread. He shivered,…
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