Poetry

As I recall, it was night in another country. Bare-chested men were shattering windows, inviting in some slight breeze. Small antiquated fans rattled, making silence an exotic and far-away resort. I was a young girl. I closed my eyes. I slid the back of my hand across my cheek. It seemed someone else's wrist. She…

It was love and then it was poetry but it was poetry that believed in love. It was doubt and then well, it was faith but it was poetry we worried the beads of. It was death and then —or before then? in the actual face of— in the deep pilings of— fallen in the…

Organ adrift in a chipped dish, dime- store item at garden's edge, gray glob in golden beer, died last night, one less to slink under the leaves of the fattening squash, eggplant, peppers pushing the flowers, gray matter, matter of fact, phallus without a bone, as the panicked mother said, her new- born's limp, and…

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…

We wake with darkness pouring Into our mouths, sister sleep With her east-iron links Broken. Priests hunch over us; Unfeeling their words, the scorn that darkens Foreheads. Brother eyes brother, Lizards circling on a white, bare wall. Forgotten, the porcelain tub where children Scouted the soft edges of their bodies, safe In the maternal water…

You know the story of the woman in a turret and how ivy puts its fingers across the moon. And besides, no one could hear. Ivy that grows forever against the dankest part of a wall gnawing gargoyles deep in the belly of the house. I would have lowered my long hair to a lover…