Poetry

Bare bough clawing for sky Street soaring from town All the crimped rooftops neatly coiffed Fences buckle around plump green yards      buttoned with flagstones Time wedged in the town hall tower Sky clamped down Station closed no train but tracks still strike through the heart and here is the postman again unlocking the trunk of…

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…

In May I can't see dogwood bloom without recalling how it once was huge as hickory till Christ was nailed to one. Since then dogwoods are twisted, small. A legend. A lie. But I can't get it from my mind. That's not the only lie I've seized: I've heard a preacher say the dead, in…

Mountain-tips soften after so much rain, the wild guesses of birds blending with air and the uppermost buds, with a god-like promotion, burst open. Especially beautiful are the brown and drunken bats who nose-dive down the barnside, not quite earth-broken.