Poetry

How, in summer, a man and woman, as in Paris, embrace under trees, and the leaves and the grass bend back and sweat amends them, in a park where the squirrels eat well, where the bronze horse could heave off its officer. How it is like water, sex in summer. You cover yourself, your leaves…

Peeking for hours into the fire, I find the faces staring back— marching cities rise and fall. Still as stone I sit, practicing death. My machine of flesh hangs lightly. Our body’s noise keeps us sleeping. Later we arise into dreams, and awake to Jacob’s ladder. At death we graduate. There the slow-mo stomp of…

When I think of you, you disappear in stages, As if I were paralyzed below my heart And wore, like a blanket, a thousand pages Of you on my lap, who come apart In the slightest wind, and disperse Like leaves. I trade you for the universe, Which holds me back When I lean over…

Coach looks at the scoreboard, tries again to press another loss in the backcourt of his brain. The players feel their blood quiet, return to its common wander. The fans shake their heads like tired dogs, put on their coats, hats, gloves, leave the bleachers, head back to what’s always there. The cops shrug, step…

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,…