Poetry

4. Two things we won't talk about: Money, and death, not necessarily in that order She's perched somewhere invisibly Like a contestant waiting in the wings. Did you say wings? Wings? she breathes. Look, I'm not some fancy prize Or afterlife, not some ethereal doll Squashed in a box. That one you had Died in…

Mother Mask has twigs in her hair she is all eye that sometimes closes shut stars on her eyelids, open are oceans open are history movies, closed are blue skies, open are sorrow pain iris clarity events I forget if closed & open make any difference one or the other, one is the other, Mother…

The head made perfect as a dome sweats between walls of bordering foam. Though curve of chrome binds brow and cheek, still at my ear remote sounds leak, the roar distended to phantom twitter; but sight, sharp, coasts for brotherly glitter. On a dark field I loaf and sulk, my egress jammed by darker hulk…

I can put her in an airplane; I can put him in a window seat. I can put clouds beneath the wings like animals, like trees, like wave after wave after wave of cornfield in Minnesota, where she's from. No, him. I can have her smiling when she hands him a drink, I can make…

after a painting by Paul Klee A man decides he doesn't want to die, he wants to take a trip. It might be a long trip, he thinks, so I'd better go alone. Or it might be short, so I'll take my wife. They board the sailboat, but at the first port of call his…

i Impeccable softness powders the upturned face of what a meadow meant. Weighed boughs: a load slides down. Muffled squeak. A child's cheek soft beyond belief takes shape beneath my palm, whereupon my whole enormous body cups to a hand whose fingers tease the nap, stroke it to dullness, coax it smooth again. Huge hollowed…

for Gale S. In bitter winter or in hundred degree heat she'd leave our street in red plaid jacket, blue-jay overalls, earflaps cap. In waterproof boots, she took the shortest route, cutting up alleys to the clapboard slaughterhouse. Punching the time clock propped on the pork renderings barrel, she crossed the curing room of hanged…

                His beak could open a bottle,      and his eyes—when he lifts their soft lids—                      go on reading something                 just beyond your shoulder—                            Blake, maybe,                      or the Book of Revelation.                 Never mind that he eats only                 the black-smocked crickets,                 and dragonflies if they happen      to be out…

He didn't really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself. —Julian Barnes Is there anyone but must repress a secret thrill, on arriving in Venice for the first time and stepping into a Venetian gondola? That singular conveyance, come down unchanged from ballad…