Poetry

The spine is a sea horse swimming in the body. The spine is inside-hair gone stiff. The spine leaks ideas the way cardboard leaks water. Submerged saw. Feller of forests. Felled by forests. The spine is innocent. The body is guilty. The spine is to the brain what the embrace is to the lover. Just…

Here's how I know God: the taste of a ripe pear or that silken explosion of the air that sinks in, spewing empty blueness. Head and hair are washed clean instantly. I'm afraid that—let's say, your eyes—will melt onto my hands, exude a fragrance toward the sky or thunder      to the netherworld like the falls…

To the north there are dog races in the snow, To the south illegal cockfights, But the birds kept openly and noisily. Suppose at the beach we see water jostled, A riptide, but also a normal wave at its own top Suggesting a benign white hole in time Where, in this white hole, fate doesn't…

the underside of one wrist says to the other, peeled green and white what swims across the bridge is tiny tinier than diamonds slick as a gleam of wet new eggs traveling along a stick flesh crackles to confess what lies within body unsheathed open the fingertips are on fire cool as rivers the desolate…

Whoever is truly cast in pure love needs no heaven, let heaven go. The body blossoms forth into a frightful silence, walls and chairs awaken. Parts of things were once human members, too. My love, your warm pressure on my temples hurts so much. It pushes me into a sacred circle, immuring, then expanding. Its…

The Master took what he could— In one season a black dress— The pupil aimed for the whole thing— Remember Charades?—got the whole thing quickly today, Got it yesterday, would get some more tomorrow. They lived and worked at the bottom of a mountain —Bears ate voraciously in said mountains— Raccoons came down to the…

for Philip Wilby Lord of the returning leaves, of sleepers Waking in their tunnels among roots, Of heart and bush and fire-headed stag, Of all things branching, stirring the blood like sap, Pray for us in your small commemorations: The facet of stained glass, the carved face Lapped by decorations on the column side, And…

. . . and yet this woman did not look like her, except for the little white shoes whose sole, where the toes went in, had imperceptible scratches like those of dancers. —Breton, Soluble Fish The Boston Ballet is doing “The Confusion of Modern      Adolescence” if you remove the first and the second to the…

for Hayden Carruth When I was a child, there was an old man with a ruined horse who drove his wagon through the back streets of our neighborhood crying, Iron . . . iron. Meaning he would buy bedsprings and dead stoves. Now it seems a blazon for the primitive Pittsburgh of rusted metal and…