Poetry

Master Oki, Keeper of Days

1 Immigration Master Oki played the word from its scabbard, counted by tens, shouting the colors of decades. Centuries are best worn with their collars showing, he gibed. Grab time by the neck, make it speak truth while the record plays and the money's unspent. He crawled into a season, its leaves were damp and…

Avalanche

for K. Curtis Lyle within an avalanche of glory hallelujah skybreaks spraying syllables on the run, spreading sheets, waving holy sounds, solos sluicing african bound transformed in america into hoodoo, inside tonguing blues snaking horns, where juju grounds down sacred chords up in the gritty foofoo where fleet rounds of cadences whirlpool as in rivers,…

The Sanity of Tomatoes

1. Tomatoes are not a poignant fruit, not with their wide, affable faces, their compliances with the eager knife. They recline in slices on the cutting board, all their operations a success. Their miniatures pose shinily in salad bowls, beaded with moisture, bathing in exotic dressings. When you bite them whole, they squeal in delight….

Wrecking Yard

In this wrecking yard, our home I turn over to you, a garden you planted long ago with her. Prepared the space cleared, hoed, and seeded. Now in profusion from these rusted, twisted coffins her flowers And before her, you said there were many. Many. This time the exchange in books Home Gardens for poetry,…

from The Generations

Edge out on the thin quaking limb of Arizona, our lost farm, the desert stretched rimless from eye to end. A few stone buildings, weathered woodshed at the axle, then long spokes of wire sheep pens ray out along the dirt tracks that know Mesa and Tucson but stop at the world. The sheep huddle…