Poetry

Three old women sat knitting In front Every time I went by. Good evening, ladies, I'd say. Good morning, too, For it's a lovely day. Finding it in myself to whistle While they stared at me, The way the deaf stare, The deaf and dumb. Two of them resuming their knitting, The third still with…

Hello Sadness come out from around that door the barn door the city steel door that lock that hedge where I see you but feel you not enough to make me proper. Come, sit on my shoulder Sadness now if you're dry or reluctant I'll wet you with welcome, wear you for the weight. I've…

The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. —Jeremiah 8:20 The morning before it happens at the rim of the field I wait for the call: the hard ground, the lull, and all around, on the verge the lit houses lie sorted and stored. And now the sound of arrowheads…

Now it's raining again. Will it, luminous, ever take the place of freedom, passion in the capital? The raindrops need not formulate as prison bars— again. The absence of rain was an illusion first one, then the other settled for. It's easy to stay up all night in the music, drinking from the robber's cup—…

A sac of waters and saturated tendrils, The tear-thatch fills the cavity of the chest And presses against the brain stem, the pelvic cradle, The distended cage of ribs. It bobs Heavily, yet urges its rubbery weight around The heart in pliant folds that flex in rhythm With the still-avid laboring waves Of dilation and…

The glass of water between them did not bar, ban or challenge their fevered conversation. But soon the glass shape disappeared and the water became a serious ocean, a sexy flow and barren. This endless gap, pitch and drowning water sprays up these facts: he was just a boy and she a thriving woman; he…

Tourniquet tight, spade vein rising, I must have done it Three or four times before I realized it was me easing the needle Into my vein. My friends crouched, waiting for their turn, Our eyes fixed on the plunger slowly pressing down. It was as close as I'd ever felt to anyone, those moments We…

You catch my breath with your waking a calf moves closer to its mother (slumbering) some brother leaves his home to bring me what I need. It doesn't work & I call you back— Sugar—I call you Sugar no rest in my slumber no sugar in my bowl

Once we snuck in to look at it, late, after the choir director had gone, after Mrs. Wilson had changed her organ shoes, clapped them in her black bag and turned out the sanctuary lights. Then we crept back into the nave, dark swelling the high ribs, the carpet swallowing our footfall. Streetlight fell red…