Poetry

The Heart wants what it wants— or else it does not care— —Emily Dickinson So still. Not a cricket. In this heat the trees around the house hold motionless even at midnight. I trundle the electric fan, little pool of wind, along with me from room to room, and imagine Emily Dickinson carrying a candle…

I pick him up and take him to the beach. He is always the same and always his sameness changes me. It takes him forever to fold his yellow shirt and blue Bermudas and finally sit. Counting rented umbrellas, he calls out their red and green colors, updating the information every minute. Sun closes in….

When I first arrived in this city I heard coins falling through the air like rain, light collecting on dusty sleeves, in gum boxes and tins; the addicts walked by a smoking pail humming into their hands. We hiked one afternoon along the river, picnicked in the ruins of a trolley station and played with…

There was a flatiron brick building built to tower over a gasoline station, a billboard against the wall—I don't know, Drink Milk, a white pillar of it filling a glass—a Gulf sign swinging over Princess Street, and at the top of the hill to Garfield Elementary, a bridge over Pennsy railroad tracks, and if a…

I went back to Dagger Point Trail after she moved to Baton Rouge. A plaque at the point says the sea takes back five inches a year, but I couldn't tell. The sand and shells seemed the same and live oak still crowned the hills. I remember the redtail tearing the rabbit on the path…

Almost time to dress for the sun's total eclipse      so the child pastes one last face in her album of movie stars—Myrna Loy      and Olivia de Havilland—names meant to conjure sultry nights, voluptuous turns across      some dance floor borne on clouds. Jean Harlow. Clipped from the Newark evening paper, whole galaxies      of splendid starlets gaze,…

I go only part way back tonight, sidetracked by fly buzz and the lies of old letters, and then Blotchy starts killing flies again and all the years between do their crumbling act, off-stage voices whispering cues I can't quite catch—wind and rivers, dead time plucking corroded wires. The light changes and we're in that…

The track favors mudders, but you pick him anyway; he shares your middle name and the form shows he's run a fast mile and a quarter at Louisiana Downs. I point out it was dry in Shreveport, but somehow I know he'll come in as long as I don't put any money on him. The…

Frayed cables bear perilously the antiquated lift, all glass and wrought iron past each apartment floor like those devices for raising and lowering angels of rescue in Medieval plays. Last night the stairwell lamps flickered off and I was borne up the seven floors in darkness, the lift a small lit cage where I thought…