but you sent me back to Turkey, and the town was Canakkale, or was it Kusadasi, no, Canakkale with my first sight of a Turkish street, of Turkish women wrapped to their eyes, and on the streets (I was high on a bus on the way to Troy) were all those small “cathedrals,” carried by…
On Monday she washed, On Tuesday she ironed, On Wednesday she visited her father, carrying seven starched shirts, a basket of folded underclothes, and a complete dinner in foil. On Thursday she cleaned, On Friday she shopped, On Saturday she handed nails to my father, who swore at her slowness. On Sunday she took a…
Charles and I go out together in his boat, which is a cat- amaran, in the burnishing weather, elated. so it's not surprising that in his boat, which is a cat at top speed among cats, this poem begins. Elated. so it's not surprising that we sing “Speed Bonnie Boat” to the winds. At top…
Remember when we were introduced to the only man in Oregon who had seen Diomeda cauta, the White-Capped Albatross also known as Shy, whose normal range is deep air deep off the continental shelf, and spoke of the Harlequin Duck, of Histrionicus histrionicus: Rather small, he said; mostly silent. You looked at him strangely. He…
I am laying my hands on the sleeping child, on this thin flesh over the winged scapula, pressing—just so—as bread is pressed. For this is the bread that falls and rises and these are the shoulder blades that cut to the nervous bone of love. But I want to press harder, tougher like a wrestler…
Beautiful beautiful nowhere. Lightly canoeing. Day sultry. Me desultory. Toing and froing testing the bottom for bass, or in fact just yoyoing aimless assortments of ornament up and down. Very encouraging soundtrack, once you get into it. Whole Canadian laid-back percussion section. Woodpecker, marshhen, dittybug, loon, frog. Sidemen, all of them, happy to just hit-it-when-indicated….
I can't say, staring at the wall of odalisques with their pellucid breasts, plump bellies, whether I want to be one of them, dazed by the petulant heat of the Midi, a white towel barely covering my damp thighs, or the old painter himself, white hair waving across his sweaty brow as he mixes the…
Yellow fingers lift a match to Virginia's shreds and edges: Deeply I pull smoke in, and blood faints at the door. My young father coughs, gags, and wipes his lips with pale narrow fingers: When he looks at his shaking hands, splaying them out to gaze at them, I understand how much his nails please…
IHaveNoTimeFor BanterSirIAmAn AncientMariner MyShipWentDown ICausedItsLoss TheyTiedMeToAn AlbatrossItIsA BigPelagicBird QuiteWholesome IfAdministered InternallyLike ChickenSoupNot TopicallyLikeA StupidPoultice
Fall 1985 - Digital