Poetry

Twenty-one turkeys amaze our eyes, come traveling north from the Berkshire Museum (Art and Natural History). It says there boa constrictors do not harm humans. False Laocoön! not to mention Eden.      On Route 7 nobody stops; but if they had a gun (or a camera in Yellowstone) they'd stop to shoot the hideous buffalo. Turkeys…

Then. No. Now. A long silk scarf of voice, pulled through the loop of throat— Jo Stafford singing on the radio. He wants so much to hear a voice like that, and it exists, as simply as creation, the way the world provides an image for the feeling that's richer than the feeling, so that…

Eat a third, drink a third, and leave a third for anger. And after waking rise slowly. And after lovemaking rise slowly. And after too much wine rise slowly. And after bloodletting rise slowly. We rise slowly after silence, taking a breath at a time. After days bent over the garden, slight comment about our…

I can't imagine life cradled between give and take, fear and desire. Will no skeleton hands tug from one side or the other? I pace your garden and pigeons scatter though one remains, his tongue fastened like wire to seed. Pure animal greed— he's consumed by it, lost judgment. Will I too hunger in your…

In this summer month, two separate men were lost in the local woods. Can woods be local? Is there more than one wood? It is unlikely. Though there are two kinds of woods, visible, and not. The first man was feeble-minded. Left his goodwill party, saw something, heard something, went to it. They found his…

Right over left, left over right, Mama disciplines braids. The Hair Rep melting on her fingers irrigates my corn rows. She sings don't let this harvest pass you by. I struggle to stay a child but I hear her. I'm between her knees and see myself as Papa's overalls coming through the wringer Jewish flat…

Her face is deep mahogany, shined with min oil, a mirror that sucks my face into its shadows, peat absorbing rain. I puff the jeweled pipe, blow smoke directly into her spider-lined lips. I exhale. She inhales, tucks her shoulder under mine. A beaded curtain divides our room, the gentlest type of boundary. We shuffle…

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…