Poetry

If you feel around with your fingers       there is a corner to every sin       Upon finding that tight spot       one must remember what to do       Listen            I have been out setting this trap       Cabbage is cheap            Nobody has seen me       if I eat right       I'll grow…

The earth already knows too much About us. We dig holes And throw ourselves in, Weep, set stones Where no stone would sleep. The mountains, blue yoke in the distance, Are coming down— Rock, bush, slaughtered tree. The sea is washing salt from the bodies Over and over, and without rest. I tell my daughter,…

Small operas, the seedy merchants at the blurred ends of fuming streets in the immigrant photographs, insist on it. What are you supposed to do with desire in America where your heart is so many poor shops? He takes a girl to the Catskills on a bus. Her dull kerchief and the black hairs wire…

for wisdom bits, I had to act now that father'd suited me up for St-hood. Better late next time.      It wasn't that I minded my toy-razor or lathering up so early, just that the sink swallowing my hairless suds would go all the way to hell and back before it let on there was anything…

We tore into each other's fragrances enough to hold Wednesday to its last possible moment, but it swept across the windows nevertheless. He always set the table and never cleared it, hoping dinner would break through into something that wouldn't wipe away. They said it was past closing time at the Indian restaurant. We both…

A pupa of pain, I sat and lay one July, companioned by the bird the Indians called “four hundred tongues.” Through the dark in the backyard by my bed, through the long day near my front couch, the bird sang without pause an amplified song “two-thirds his own,” books told me, “and one-third mimicry.” Gray…

When I am positive that nobody loves me, I despise all musical instruments. I can't endure vacuum cleaner attachments. I hate Yeats, my mother, and all the attention Jesus got. I avoid, perhaps hate, great black people. When nobody loves me, I am positive of it. I devise an impossible Fahrenheit. A heat that could…

Because I was empty my body got me a child, the small idea of a child— some pearly cells and light. I thought of it all night. It still lacked hands or a face with which to fill its hands, or another, lovelier face to fill its heart. Because I tend to take myself apart,…

Entering, I step up into a foyer of tea-chairs and brochures engraved with solemn questions. My friend lies in a far chapel under some candles and bas-reliefs, looking wind-flushed in a half-open casket and black suit, like he's playing dead but healthier than in years. Seeing him hits me like a slap and I actually…