Poetry

Geneva was the wild one. Geneva was a tart. Geneva met a blue-eyed boy and gave away her heart. Geneva ran a roadhouse. Geneva wasn't sent to college like the others: Pomp's prideful punishment. She cooked out on the river, watching the shore slide by, her lips pursed into hardness, her deep-set-brown eyes dry. They…

Tall in the doorway stands the gentle visitor. I catch my breath.      (She's quite deaf,      not interested in      details of my décor.      Her few words amaze me.      Her visits are irregular,      brief. When our eyes meet      how I am drawn to her.      I keep honey cream, in case,      in the freezer. Once      she stayed for…

It's a habit what we remember in what moods or places. That night, I thought, calmed by the food and wine, I could have walked with you until the twelfth of never or something like that. So we walked like that, hours through the Marais studying doors, vestibules, courtyards in the brimming three-quarter moonlight. Pit-stopped,…

Note: Traditionally, black-eyed peas are served on New Year's Eve. Each black-eyed pea one eats brings luck.      Well! Johnnie thinks. He has his nerve! Crashing this party! What stuck-up conceit! Passing his induction papers around; another Negro whose feet never touch the ground. His name is Melvin Nelson. In his eyes the black of dreams…

There she is in her garden bowing & dipping, reaching stretched with her shears— a dancer commanding forces no one else any more fears. The garden's not enclosed. It encloses her. It helps her hold her bliss. (She is too shy for transports.) It helps keep her whole when grief for unchangeable reasons waits to…

There's a train coming down the pike. We were Hilary, Pat, Lori and me. I haven't thought of them since that day in Abergavenny. We'd set out for Wales, Lori and I knapsack-backed. She with the feather in her purple hat. Hilary and Pat came east and tacked through Dublin to meet us at Abergavenny….

A cold Sunday morning in early December. The first snow. All night long the sky hung heavy with a locked-in gathering flood. Then at dawn the first snow came. The first snow. Looking at the sky, Rachel, who lives twenty blocks away, sees at dawn the first snow come, drawing a veil between her house…

Although it stands between the kidnappers and me There's the baby's cry again the third time this long night Although it stands between me and the kidnappers and testifies There the lights are out They're all finally asleep And testifies to what I suppose I must call my freedom I don't like to look on…

We pulled into her driveway, kissed TV-style: no tongues. Oh, twice or so I dumped my tongue against her clenched teeth. No go. She pulled away, curled a loose strand of hair behind her ear and patted it. Then nervously she asked, “At your house when you spill your milk or something, does your mom…