My first impulse is to write a poem of my own, the way Olympic ice dancing makes me want to skate in an indoor arena. Better than anyone, I know where to touch my body, how to tighten long laces and leave earth, how to train on empty ice and prefer it. I can't resist…
I am told gravity insists. So I lie ass flat on a green deck. The sea comes at me like a sexual spurt. I am my own bicuspid. Bone white, a wave turns in, hits steel like middle C. A man moves his feet from my head, says, I'll leave you alone. I can never…
I was the first and slowest man—for that sort of thing, you called yourself a man. I handed the baton to Rae, who passed it to Sue, and on to Sharlene. We were the four best runners among the girls in our class. Rae got married in high school and had kids. Sue left college…
Waialua Plantation, 1919 I thought, when I left the fields and hauling cane and hoeing out the furrows for this job of counting and writing and palaver in the rough, sing-song English of the store, I had it made and could scheme a little, put away something, so long as I made the balance at…
for Gary Lee and Bob Harris Cologne's cathedral rises in a steep geyser of rust, stopped fountain of ore, backwards torrent of brimstone and extinguished prayers. Its volcanic thrust ruptures the cement outside the rebuilt Bahnhof where streamlined trains hurry the tourist to her dank ascent inside this umber chunk of Gothic mind. For six…
Think of something unlikely to live in the mouth. Little rubber rug, pincushion stippled and pink. Old carrot, slug lolling in the salty mist of the Oregon coast. There are traces of a residue chemists refuse to analyze. Now go to a mirror and watch the tortoise paddling, the rope tricks. Granny in the window,…
No matter how many times I try I can't stop my father from walking into my sister's room and I can't see any better, leaning from here to look in his eyes. It's dark in the hall and everyone's sleeping. This is the past where everything is perfect already and nothing changes, where the water…
Winter impounds the waves of Lake Michigan With one too-curious child caught in the frozen Undertow. What I want to see cannot be seen From this window, like the clock that once ticked At the end of my grandfather’s telescope. The child and the clock are overgrown By time and buildings. My grandfather is dead….
By Caputo's Bakery there's a waft of almond left, an edge of cardamon. The mimosa dusts down yellow onto a green four-door. Leaning, a woman, her shadow like a spoon to stir the air, tastes a man. The engine's running. It's a long walk home, tiring, but I can't sleep— the upstairs neighbors fight. “You…
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