Poetry

clearing the sidewalk, sweeping a path through the rubble, I found some trash I had to kick off the curbstones. under the wheels of trucks someone took a tumble. a shoppingbag lady watched and began to mutter, but I couldn't hear her, couldn't make out the yammer the crackle of paper dogs in the nutshell…

They should have slept, would have but had to fight the darkness, had to build a fire and bathe a man in flames. No other soap's as good when the dirt is the skin. Black since birth, burnt by birth. His father is not in heaven. No parent of atrocity is in heaven. My father…

A clear-cut wreck, I made the poet nervous Asking what salvation writing could afford. “You mean,” she asked more slowly than she thought, “Like religion?” “Exactly,” I said, knowing She was a religious, solitary woman. It was as though she guessed my real question Was, “Can poetry keep one from the question, ‘Why this?’ Why…

A tiger shark Swims from the mother stream, Away from danger Or hunger, to an unknown Planet orbiting a dreamer's head. My grandfather came from Trinidad Smuggled in like a sack of papaya On a banana boat, to a preacher's Bowl of gumbo & jambalaya, to jazz; The name Brown fitted him like trouble, A…

All the doors in my home are open. There's a pulse outside I want to hear. The phone's unplugged. The pastiche of you on me would be unforgivable now. If there's a god squirming around she sees me & is me. I wish the birds were souls, invisible. I wish they were what I think…

I'll miss formality; Although it showed how I Wore sneakers on a Saturday, I'll miss the Sabbath, Although it showed how I Was spiritually unkempt and common. I'll miss the Sabbath For how it rose, against gravity, above all Spiritually unkempt and common Rituals of the unritualistic, For how it rose against gravity, above all,…

Figs & plums & stolen Red apples were sour When weighed against your body In the kitchen doorway Where July Shone through your flowered dress Worn thin by a hundred washings. Like colors & strength Boiled out of cloth, Some deep & tall smell Made the daylilies cower In early evening. Where did the wordless…

I am always hungry & wanting to have sex. This is a fact. If you get right down to it the new unprocessed peanut butter is no damn good & you should buy it in a jar as always in the largest supermarket you know. And I am an enemy of change, as you know….

She, a beautician, came to see her friend Inside the morgue, when she had had her cry. She found the body dumped there all awry, Not as she thought right for a person’s end, Left sideways like that on one arm and thigh. In their familiarity with the dead It was as if the men…