Poetry

Mama Elsie's ninety now. She calls you whippersnapper. When you two laugh, her rheumatism Slips out the window like the burglar She hears nightly. Three husbands & an only son dead, she says I'll always be a daddy's girl. Sometimes I can't get Papa's face Outta my head. But this boy, my great- Great-grandson, he's…

1. My country material— once aerial as a name—has dropped its soul where ruminating camels cave like children, eyes uppermost. And under their hooves in the sand dolls and scrolls burn and a poem calls to its poet who doesn't respond. Sand melts into glass pocked with the turquoise bubbles water looks like. These are…

The invisible man inside me is crying. He has lightning in his head. His hands fool tentatively with my breasts and all of his legs are dry. The invisible man—I have him surrounded. He is crying blood with his bones in the soup. He is a walking air meal. There is meat in his hair…

for Kate Breathless, emerging into light, we stare with neighboring gargoyles over the square, so cool and blue, of Notre-Dame. Paris, 1969, your birthday: eight-year-old hand in mine. The city unfolds, fairy-tale spires rise to autumn sky, Sacré-Coeur flowers, white peony floating in space. I want this day to be as perfect as your face,…

I. My father believed this was the worst of all possible worlds: he yearned for Australia. This was what he saw: land. That was all. Why he didn't pine for Colorado or Guam I'll never understand. I know nothing of his life except for the details: married at nineteen, left college a year later. He…

Amid our many complaints the president heads a new world order      beginning to broadcast. Her skin is never my skin.      It is where we cross over to whatever is in store. Her dream is anchored to the pilings,                  sequences of a goddess talking softly to her boat for a long time. In my…

NYC, December 1990 He nose col's he ass but he don' know an' he ain' got no elbow t' practice tellin' things apart. Brass monkey-balls fallin' off— it so friggin' col’. I ain' got no snow-head: I c'n see whole town's in a hurry git t' where it's warm 'n' coffee 'n' hot things to…

I.                  When my brother died, a stranger                        drove his gray flocked coffin none of us chose, across the country                                    to the cemetery plot. On top of the box were propped            someone else's flowers, dead a day sooner. Brown-edged, they stank,                        …

The walk home is later and so it happens in darker light. Such a wind on the face, on the glamorous graveyard, the city with its bronze horses and their men, and the white stone shrines light up at night like jewels. The air is less supple, less fecund here. The bats are out. In…