Poetry

There was a fence, a loosened strand of hair, and so something of a kept appearance to the place, though what was kept, or if it were kept still, we could not tell. And halfway down to the sea the winding one-track road or worn way over the two- hundred-year-old boil and spill of dark…

for Laszlo There is nothing left on earth that's new so we repeat old stories, journey like a million others, commit the same limp mistakes, take ourselves where we can trace the folly of someone else's life and feel superior, Queen/King-for-a-Day. We are modern—so we know there's no such thing as gods with little g's,…

for Ignacio and Norman At dawn, I've heard them in our yard, my son's two friends doubled over and cackling, like the birds that fly in from the countryside. Or like two old men crouched in prayer, but for the squeals, an hysteria that comes and goes with eight years. Perhaps, it is the spell…

Hands the likes of which we'll never know again have grasped us, found us everything they wished for as an answer to the body's tendency towards mass and ponderous desire. So it was only natural that they would want to lift us as far away from the earth as possible— closer to lamplight, starlight. to…

My sister Mary-Cucha was the first of the Garcias to fly. I would see her above my crib her arms stretched out, light bristling in her curly hair. When I could speak I asked my mother where Mary-Cucha had gone. “In the sky,” she would answer. “Your sister was frightened by something dark in the…

Our path from the kitchen dwindles in the bales we've piled beside the tilted barn. The scarecrow is askew. A blue bandanna and a shirt bursting with a straw heart resembles everyone we barely knew. And this doesn't scare anybody but us. We work into ruts. They follow the road into town. Here is an…

I am working on a field guide to wind. It will be my labor of love, my legacy. None of us should have to countenance a loss of words, a lack of common names in the face of the world's embarrassing wealth of sundry motions and stirrings. I am working on a source in which…

Jonathan says our ferry will dock at 1 a.m. At this remote island and remain here For thirty minutes, time enough For a sulphur bath at the hot spring. The gate drops and we run up the landing Toward a shed with a splinter Of applejack-light leaking out Through the darkness around the door. We…

Until I grew weary of watching the surfacing carp stop just this side of the Milltown bridge to feed on whatever floats, I thought I might die among the immigrant workers, or worse yet, live on forever, nursed like their stagnant steins of beer. The landscape gasped along its barely breathing banks, and I found…