Poetry

“In this example of petrification, the dinosaur bone has been replaced by agate and the central cavity filled with amethyst.”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…

Ten below and falling, a record snow, wind— cold this deep this late, man, nothing crawls out from under. Logpiles, fences, hedges, trees, likely some of the innumerable neighborhood children are stalled under identical humps of snow. Each chimney flue stuck like a breathing tube through each snowcaked roof lisps the thin ascender of the…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

My foot, like a magic. bird in some fable, cleft open so suddenly, so gently— only my eyes awaken, seeing this new spring, this red, improbable river, this narrow tongue wagging where never was a mouth. Still, no pain, I walk on, until I wear the ocean's blue shoes, my ankles white with salt, and…

In thrice 10,000 seasons, I will come back to this world In a white cotton dress. Kingdom of After My Own Heart. Kingdom of Fragile. Kingdom of Dwarves. When I      come home, Teacups will quiver in their Dresden saucers, pentatonic      chimes Will move in wind. A covey of alley cats will swarm on the      side…

Below the barn where you practiced smooking cigarettes for days till you could do it in public like an old hand, where at twelve you lay in secret with your cousin and couldn't kiss her no matter how willing you both were, you stood that day looking back, the field perfect with snow behind you….