These fish are older than I. Every morning I learn from the koi how to swim in the wind- ruffled pond: the flow of the tail, the fan of the fins in water, eyes open all ways to the shadow-life moving beyond us. Who knows what goes on under the bridge, the plank where I…
1. Life Style Invincible begetters, assorted Scruffses have always lived hereabouts in the woods trapping beaver or fox, poaching enough deer to get by on. Winters, they barricade their groundsills with spoiled hay, which can ignite from a careless cigarette or chimney spark. In the Fifties, one family barely got out when the place lit…
It takes a needle to complete the job— pick the two choked eyes empty of the thread, pick out the particles of sweater wool. It takes a dark, thin book to tray the pickings (they're hard to gather off her skirt, the floor) and chute them in the trash can; takes her tea-tin container for…
At your feet, I am a shoemaker’s apprentice, Toxic in a long day of fumes. I’m listening To the fluorescent light come on In April, an Isadora flinging her hot white scarf Across a month mottled by the chemicals Of Daylight Savings Time, in the spokes of the wheels Of hormones turning in the unseasoned…
Gone to seed, ailanthus, the poverty tree. Take a phrase, then fracture it, the pods' gaudy nectarine shades ripening to parrots taking flight, all crest and tail feathers. A musical idea. Macaws scarlet and violet, tangerine as a…
We never had a cabin in the woods. We never had a yard, a dog, a child. We never lived in the same neighborhood. We never ate, half-naked, on a tiled terrace over the vineyards in Languedoc, or drank milkshakes on the toweled front seat of that fifth-hand Chevy pickup truck whose gears required a…
Two lovers met. It wasn't lovers' lane, But a lesser traveled road. No others came. One lover held the other's hand. The other Man was me. I watched as if I hovered Far above the scene. And as the sky Began to prickle with the stars, I tried To understand why the other couldn't free…
1985 Rain. Ten years since we have spoken. Since Ma's suicide, fifteen. Triage of families: who to attend to—the widowed, the childless, the orphaned? When you smashed the kitchen radio all the calm times you played piano went dead too, just another symptom, though you swept up before sending me to my room. On those…
The question he so casually raises, hand fisted on slim hip, is What endures? The small terra-cotta figure shows the rough brown beneath the smooth black in random places; a chip on his shoulder, a small bite taken from the stylish behind. But he endures, gracefully. More than that: mockingly. No one his age should…
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