The dentist looks At my broken mouth The way I'd look At a child who Innocently yells The word “Nigger” Then smiles, a baby Jesus. Is there an alibi For this? That's What I hear beneath Those weekly sighs. Poverty? Child abuse? Look at this, he sighs And gives me The Yiddish word For dirt,…
Adultery is wrong because injustice is done to the beloved. Fucking has nothing to do with it. We don't fuck, anyway. Winging it, maybe, Lilith to Eve. This is stern stuff: the boundaries breaking your voice, your mouth on my mind—wildfire eyes! The sisters are doing it for themselves, uh-huh, un-huh, Aretha sings. belts out…
Where do I find Jesus, he asked the operator. She gave him the number she'd seen on TV, and now he's saved in San Francisco, but listen, folks, we're in this soup together. Last night the car seat burned. Then the zoo, the bears, and lastly the kitchen, and I was afraid. Love's doing well…
Who owned anything that afternoon? All but one small pack— even the man I should have been in love with— left on the train without me. I sat, ordered up a sweet brown Pelforth. After all, I could not be sadder than I could. In the café de la gare in a town called Foix…
for R. H. After visits to his hospital bed where sickness slowly played a jazz garden in his head, I watered leaves and stems to a green brilliance, troweled back the influence of weeds, things I'd do for any friend knowing what is temporary. Just days before his release the leaves grew brassy, stems decidedly…
. . .they have passed into the world as abstractions, no one seeing what they are —Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887-1986 1 Late winter light Suppose it comes from the snow blowing all day across your winter road umber with violet shadows Or suppose it comes from some energy farther away that may never be understood to…
Excuse me, Sir, if sweet words turn to silver bullets in bad light where industrial signs stammer VACANCY all night over peep shows and fortified wines in the eye of the most liveable city. But you see this overcoat won't release me though winter's 5 months through and I'm sick to death of the mouthwash…
East Coker: sun afire in midwinter, rain-of-gold Teardrops at tip of holly and ivy leaf Instills nativity. (A warm day Travelers had of it down from Wells to St. Michael's Church, where T. S. E.'s ancestors Once bowed their heads then sailed for “Jerusalem.”) Scion, return and nest your ashes Here in the wall at…
For years a sign near Randy Miser's yard announced: MEDORA TOWN OF HARMONY A bar of music showed beneath those words the first notes of the scale ordered mi, do, re. I've wondered driving in—to Mel's for beer, past our shut-down factory— what tune that railroad man was whistling while he pounded ties. Who heard…
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