Poetry

One of the laws the pseudo-commissioner decreed: We were to plug our memory sockets Into the damaged main-frame he kept locked In his dungeon. With the flick of his switch, Worlds began to crumble. Or so we thought. And in these quasi-desperate straits Only one person could save us. He'd need A pack of radar…

I wish we were our furthest father’s father. A clump of slime within a warming swamp. Living and dying, fertilizing, bearing,      We’d ooze our essence, numb and damp. A sprout of algae or a sandy hillock, Formed by the winds and heavy with earth’s clutch. Then quits; even a pond-bug’s head, a gull’s wing      Would…

drifts near the ceiling above every head, one Ma per son, daughter, and grandchild. You have a yellow Ma, Mother, like a lightbulb in a cloud. She's looking at you with a kind smile. She's taking it and taking it. With every Ma there is a Pa to dish it out. You have a yellow…

A pencil is stuck in your back: manifestation of a common practice— doll torture (the flip side of pinning flies). It's this evil innocence we worship in you like a golden laugh. Idol of tacky teenage-hood, devil's workshop of poo-poo magic, R. D. Laingesque schizophrenic peeing on asylum wall, or writing a name in shit:…

In this form invented by the author, each three-line poem has exactly 17 words. I. VERITAS 1. Harvard's River Such blinding brilliance, mirroring Sol on flow: To see you, Charley, First I must shut my eyes. 2. Harvard's Fog1 You house, fair Harvard, so much—you spawn so little— Bloom. Bees Don't poke in glass flowers….

The first ones were attached to my dress at the waist, one on either side, right at the point where hands could clasp you and pick you up, as if you were a hot squeeze bottle of tree syrup, and the sashes that emerged like axil buds from the angles of the waist were used…

From his monstrous planet, light-years from the cities, And still coated in protective larva, He arrives in no-time flat. Within himself, as if chanting A mantra, he whispers “curved space,” “chronity,” “Warped equation,” “parallel breath.” The silence Of the ashen landscape dunks his heart In a deeper ocean of quiet. The ghosts take no notice….

Always you feel beautiful in the light. Is it only sensation you've craved: the body born to bloom, arcing open beneath the sun, the smile surrounding your every curve, pore, angle. For this some say you may have sold your soul. So now for days, months, more, there's been nothing to make you shine as…

We wake with darkness pouring Into our mouths, sister sleep With her east-iron links Broken. Priests hunch over us; Unfeeling their words, the scorn that darkens Foreheads. Brother eyes brother, Lizards circling on a white, bare wall. Forgotten, the porcelain tub where children Scouted the soft edges of their bodies, safe In the maternal water…