Poetry

Armero, Colombia

Goodbye people of Armero. Never again shall you dance nor drink ale at the tiendas. Next week are scheduled no first communions no more patio piñatas; no church bells toll no idlers stroll along the Calle Mariscal Sucre. Doña Flor, her customers, will serve no more and the spade of Don José will turn no…

Untitled

In the city that apparently never was—the here— where the hero dies and dies to no avail, where one is not oneself it suddenly appears (and you, who are you and are you there?) I found myself at the window at last, the room inside dark, it being late, the — outside dark, it being…

Objet d’Art

“In this example of petrification, the dinosaur bone has been replaced by agate and the central cavity filled with amethyst.” —The Great Book of Jewels The greenish light that filters through, Jade-pale, illumines my cold flesh, Obsidian waters bear my weight, Their warmth the salty phlegm of lymph. My brain is crystal, it commands My…

Act IV, Sc. 1

Look she said this is not the distance we wanted to stay at—We wanted to get close, very close. But what is the way in again? And is it too late? She could hear the actions rushing past—but they are on another track. And in the silence or whatever it is that follows them there…

Words for Myself

The needle sinks in. Cold snakes through my veins, chemistry that kills to heal. The doctor chats of skiing, how he glided along the empty, blank expanse of Commonwealth Avenue after the snowfall. I carry home a needle-deep mauve stain. As a child I had a nightmare of my mother, a black bruise on her…

Magnum Mysterium

Since I've lived in many places, it's odd That I continue to waken in Nebraska, Wandering into the sunroom where the wheat Has come up wide overnight. A girl leans Into the wind and it is I. Every day, it seems as though the poets thin; Rare breed. Of the people who have loved me,…

The Birth of Beauty

Here comes the hunger for the made thing. For what the      sea can't clean further. Here it comes buzzing after a stillness rust can't corrupt nor the secret blue moss under the hill. Don't look back that way, friend, at the      not-yet- knotted string—the gorgeous sweep of it the back of things keeps feeding into…