Poetry

One      The angels are sitting on their asses. Their wings      are clean. They do not bend to search the straw.      They do not think of finding anything buried in      the corner. Smooth, cold, white. None are related;      they are all angels. Who knows how much they      weigh? They do not care to mourn. They are…

And then a lighter sorrow sheltered me. For weeks I was under the cloak of an archon then I saw spring, and the spell was broken. Today the woodpeckers are nesting near the ridge. She—the big she—stays all morning in the lichen laurel waiting for them to approach her. She makes her call, “I-am-not-I-am-not” and…

It was another round. The cloud's puffed eye. A thumb torn out of the pie. The pie thrown into her face. Not bat a lash. Not lash the fields of whining grass. Not bash the sun into a simpleton. She who made the trumpet gleam and blaze made the smoky cricket weep. He who put…

—And the earth was still baffled by the small spaces, especially in spring when people admired its growth from great heights. The earth was baffled by the tiny gaps such as those between minutes. In those places of yearning, as in the emptiness between a child's back teeth, it was trying to decide if there…

Lump of vein Rack of lamb, the lame leg— today—a wing apart from the central thing. I find I found and off the ground O O O awful news. I've feathers and no lift.

As soon as she cleans her tray, she stops By the office, picks up a grocery bag Marked with her name in red crayon And spends the rest of her lunch cleaning Candy wrappers, twigs, leaves, and other trash From the school's scrubby patch Of front lawn. She does this diligently, No complaints, as if…

The cage is the only creature alive singing in the yard singing its giant heart out singing its giant heart out for us. We who have been the other's hour, we who have made the minutes accountable, and the seconds lively and saw the big tree lovely, we and our hands slowly fall apart, a…

The Pilgrim: Blue plough bones High eye socket Soot rock gristle Be with me Be with me Be with me Never be not with us Fox The Glacier: My gentle coming: fall I am with you my Gold-pan My sieved and sieving brow Most wanted: Favorite: Wanted and needed and loved: Diaspora.

Twilight moves on weightless wrists and runs aground. To strand, to sail along the coast, to coast. When we get there, you want to lie down. To sleep, to spread a blanket across the ground glass of light at the edge. There is moistness under the hair on that nape. Artesian depths of body rise…