Poetry

  • Swollen Haiku

    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…

  • To the Green Man

    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…

  • Fishes

    . . . 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…

  • Voices Inside and Out

    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…

  • Warrior

    Despite the trouble, I decide to see them right away— these lights, perhaps they are someone's eyes. For my part this spade has proved more useful than an instinct—I had no idea I was going to crawl from such a small space. Whoever wants butter and eggs and soy and corn, a radish, a tomato,…

  • We Are the Junction

    The body is the herb, the mind is the honey. The heart, the heart is the undifferentiated. The mind touches the body and is the sun. The mind touches the heart and is music. When body touches heart they together are the moon in the silently falling snow over there. Which is truth exceeding, is…

  • Blanks for New Things

    She wondered how to make the new faithful to the original. Everything seemed so much itself, and already something else. Life became thicker and thicker over time. My fidelities to her and to the whole place became extremities of the same god. While she heard voices I was swooning, there was this seduction by the…

  • The Sacrifice

    We come to each other exactly at the center, the spine of ample fire, and suffer to be revised. Stay with me. Weren't we promised the sheer flame, bright change so clean even our clothes wouldn't smell of smoke, not one hair of our heads would be singed? Yet, just now, didn't the tongues slip…