Poetry

Family Portrait

“Sutton,” my wife says, “the girls won't wash between their legs.” What am I supposed to do about it? I think, having just come in from buying round steak that I will try to tenderize with a mallet, then salt and pepper, dredge in flour and fry and serve with green peas, biscuits, gravy. But…

Confession

The Nazi within me thinks it's time to take charge. The world's a mess; people are crazy. The Nazi within me wants the windows shut tight, new locks put on the doors. There's too much fresh air, too much coming and going. The Nazi within me wants to be boss of traffic and traffic lights….

Love Lies Bleeding

Red wax of the apple, small brown pears not yet figured: a perfect day's picking and still an untouched ladder slants under the seckle tree. The ashy-headed geese overhead trembling in a wedge: they too will go down in the hourglass this month, October, dingy Goya! Working until my hands are useless I hear in…

Winthrop

The east coast was west for us, and cold. For sore throats my mother made egg-lemon soup, her face misting over the big pot as it boiled another sea, the oar-shaped ladle lost in steam. Now the yellow lamb broth twirls open like a sunflower when I say “avgo-lemono.” The language breaks on this little…

Success

Cottage in which quiet persuades me I am the only one who has made myself useful, like God beginning to eat his young: One by one like poisoned mice the years smell in the wall. Hell's Peeping Tom with his ruddy face takes a closer look in the hole. At dawn and at dusk, a…

Gulley Farm

What is a farm but a mute gospel? Emerson Red deer stop sucking at turf as though the living came to life in a pose. And the queen-sheep, white ruffs on the neck, gaze with renewed immobility at their shepherd in moonboots stalking the volatile hush of a hidden reactor. In a true pastoral, he'll…