Poetry

We begin with a catalog of all the dead things seen or not seen in the way the eyes turn quickly away and return again furtively (was that a dog or a pile of trash swarming with flies?) The black rat in the stream drowned between two stepping stones the water washing through his coat…

Tonight I won't dance behind the ark. And if they pound on my door, the dancers with their torn shirts, their voices whooping over the storm, I will blow out the light and hold hands with sweet Michal in the dark. I know the people will come out to watch the ark pass like a…

To want is to rub out death. To smack its white skin with a stamp and then stare at the eggs. Spin a vase around, let it hiss like a top, and dismember hymns. Nature contains several planes, one of which walks balanced on edge, munching milk. To want is to collapse into ocean galleys….

The light wouldn't go away and he kept on walking In the sort of French a baby speaks Sometimes he forced himself to be spoken to sometimes not A woman dressed as a pre-teen may have asked a question They shuffled on the ocean floor in gentle parallel streams      opposed But not mixing cool salt…

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…