Poetry

1 This morning, everything went with the tide: Deirdre's doll, Heather's hat, the Meow-Mix cats, all but this surge inside, nerve-sheaths white, blue-green, my ramrod spine loose, flexible at last. How to possess ourselves at 5 a.m.? When they come to me feverish and pocked, I tell them to brush their teeth, gnaw on a…

In abalone, northern lights      settle down            like barnacles incrusting holds      of chinaware            beneath the seas. Light plays,      rolling designs on waves—            hypnotic damascene— and gaze turns into sea-stare      trained            on the slates of eternity. Beyond, below, the headlands,      magnitudes of brightness            fade; light settles down,      losing speed            in long…

for Carolyn Matsumoto, 1959-1984 Everybody has some and everybody knows Dorothy has beautiful feet and does it matter ot anybody other than of course the ballet master who told her this is the foot I have been waiting for. Took it in his hands. Let it rest there on his thigh while he held her…

My father strokes each boot with wax. The smell's licorice. Sounds of wings as he buffs the black hides to spit-shine against his knees. I'd shave my face— echoing moons smooth, by either shoe. But men are measured to their glow. When night heels in, foot to sole, it's not brilliance he sees. I funnel…

My mother and her friends fit into the sockets of the no-color sky, tilted ocean sky. The salt-filmed air — a plagiary of the air condition in the mill where they work: its measure of exact seams, the quick symmetrical rhythm of eight precise motions. I am older than she is here in her zip-back…

1 I know all that's wrong with coveting your neighbor's life, but I want the one I've invented for this couple in front of me in line at the license bureau. I can see the pulse in his temple, the faint down along her jaw. But I can't understand their constant murmurings, so practiced they…

Between his crib slats the baby fed on them, a man, a woman, the white sheet they turned to, the vows, the sweats, they traded, gulping. Afterward, someone in shadow got up, put on the falling light, first footsteps of the rain, returning only to help prepare their supper. The other dozed before the window's…

Grandmother said her grandmother unwrapped the knives & forks each meal, backward-walking to the cabin she left. She remembered her dishes on the shelf, a book, her feather bed. The way sun dusted the floor. Soldiers could come again & push her on a trail in the dead of winter. After the removal she started…

When you collapsed on the roof in the heat I dragged you down the shingles, the cedar splitting, your blunt fingers and hands with their old bashes and scars, thudding against my arms, banging the wood. The sky that clear blue space in the flame backed off like an open palm.            I slid you…