Poetry

The freezer holds only a few things. Fewer as it makes its ermine muff of frost, as it comes time, and overtime, to defrost. The shelves hold a few things. At the back on the lowest slab with the margarine, my withered corsage, red carnation: I dressed in black, and went on the bus to…

These people in the future won't be like us. Oh no, they'll be kinder and their foreheads will bulge past their noses with wisdom. They'll have our pictures of course, although they won't be snapshots as we know them but little holographs, three-dimensional photos, so when one takes one from his pocket it will look…

I want to say night is a flaming tuba but that is not right. In flame and tuba we do not see deer migrating through the pine forest or the full moon sitting in a fat chair reading your latest book of poems. We do not see the accidental death of two teenagers on the…

Like jewelry his bicycle gleams on my porch, attached to his hands, carried a flight before he even knocks and it wheels its majesty into my kitchen. As we talk of the torch I flick my lighter. Later we fly to the park. He wheels away down streets and sometimes closer, asking how far, how…

blue wing      I found you a monarch flown from his route along the meridian into my tarred driveway where is your mate who was always with you and is not used to solitary travel I took you for an heir of blueness a passenger of seasons I took you for orchid the pupa wakes to…

In her studio an artist begins to paint a portrait of Saint Francis in his beast-colored robe. He is bending slightly forward preaching to the birds. With short vertical strokes she paints the birds white, the mountains blue. She outlines the features of his face, thin lips, high cheekbones, a golden halo. She paints the…

Before supper, my father's wife shouts my brother out. He has come too close, touched her like a son, she said, like a son. I don't want any more sons. And my father, ignoring this too, glad he is on the Florida coast now, goes out into late fall's twilight to pick his grapefruit, ripe…

So what if your name is “Burning Bush”— hair like fire, that bright, that red. And fingers delicate as birthday candles. So what if you look a little eerie, so pale and thin astride that bony nag.      Still you are the luminous madonna — both lodestar and throat-lump in one.            Without you, my voice…