Poetry

  • Pas de Deux

    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…

  • Somerset Alcaics

    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…

  • The Poet-In-Residence

    He makes a myth of everything he does: At dawn he puts his shirt on—that's a poem; At night he takes it off—same deal. Alone, He drinks to blot out the young man he was. Oh, he was fine—muscles rippling, the fire Of subject matter in his eyes: his home Was what he wrote about…

  • Almanac

    1. The sky is like the belly of a snake. 2. My mare shakes powdered sugar from her coat. 3. How much freeze and thaw can tulips take? 4. The river's out. We come and go by boat. 5. John Deeres upholster fields in corduroy. 6. Shoots flicker like heat lightning through the dust. 7….

  • The Critic

    The “texts” hang from her jaws like bags of feed— The one end chews; the other drops its pile. The nameplate on her door reads, or should read: “World's Largest Overstimulated Child.” Like Pegasus, she takes the “aerie” view— (Whose work holds interest if her own cannot?)— And trundles down the runway, lifts—(Mon Dieu! The…

  • Jeanne

    The insistent logic of rain makes you turn from the window and try once again to read the book that made you cry when you were thirteen, the age the Maid of Orléans saw St. Michael ride down from the flaming sky and tell her to mind her mother and always be a good girl….