Poetry

And sometimes they are birthcries,      ancient audience, succulent moon and Milky Way,      and sometimes they are prayers, jubilant paths, perilous constellations,      this spirited, whirling jewelry I must wear,      these bride-shy or ruffian hoops, this work-that-must-be-done      in beauty, in beauty— Look, my dance is a willingness away      from poverty's arrows, all the known hells,      a brisk…

They arrive in the blustery summer twilight, couples in coupes, roadsters, and touring cars, up from Falmouth and Hyannisport in Palm Beach suits and taffeta weave. There is dancing to Paul Whiteman and Alice Fay. What summons our attention—my mother-in-law told me this—is not the soft flags luffing at each high corner of the pavilion,…

What's Hitchcock up to in this bad movie? The eerie music rises to crescendo Scaring me before there's any danger. A circular staircase spirals into shadow. My heart starts pounding at his grisly tricks— A gunman's silhouette, a mysterious key, A creaking blind, darkness, unknown steps, A cowardly tramp who only wants to flee And…

Little chameleon swooning for a tin pot of old water, you remind me of our worst lieutenant generals, balancing on tiptoes, yanked tall and then swollen with greed, curling their thick tongues like hoodwinked nooses down into the blue bowl— the color of tricky sky, of well-traveled ocean glass, the last emptied bottle tossed overboard—…

Not the one he's wearing in that stopped length of ground, but the one we saw together in the little shop in Oregon—moss agate so green it was nearly black on its silver band. Hard to come across it after, emptied of his hand and watchful. Thinking to surprise its power with treason, I gave…

He said he'd meet me at the theater, and since the boy in the ticket booth knew Elvis bought all the seats for the late show, he didn't bother to ask if I was Elvis's date or to notice I was the pretty face on all the magazine covers the girls he was too afraid…

For my son I tried to distinguish      between personal fear and principle. Now laughter phlegms deep in my throat because I remember the tenuous mud dam      in the marsh, only surface tension holding back the black water, and the sleek beaver      gliding with a mouthful of sedge and sapling back to the lodge and her…

As the soft green of moss covers the gnarled roots of an old banyan, so evening creeps over the folds of my grandparents. Veiled by the dusk from the hurting brilliance of a young world, they sit in undisturbed stillness on garden chairs, side by side. Many who come to see their son, or their…

This miserable scene demands a groan. —John Gay Frankly, I don't care if the billionaire is getting divorced and thus boosting the career of his girlfriend, a “model/spokesperson” with no job and nothing to promote; nor does my concern over celebrity X undergoing surgical procedures leaked as “primarily cosmetic,” if it can be measured quantitatively,…