Poetry

When a child dies & it is newsworthy, the newsman comes & searches the crowd, our eyes for the delegate. One of us who can't wait to tell him before the heavily equipped one, one like a soldier, the cameraman, “It is a shame, he had his whole life ahead of him” or “He didn't…

Upstairs my husband types our wills, Pressing the keys with one finger. The sound makes eerie counterpoint, To all the birds, newly arrived. We have assigned our house and cats. We've looked at our insurance forms. The will must be typed perfectly. The drafts are growing at his feet. The typing stops, then starts again…

The street deserted. Nobody, only you and one poor dirt colored robin, fastened to its branch against the wind. It seems you have arrived late, the city unfamiliar, the address lost. And you made such a serious effort — pondered the obstacles deeply, tried to be your own critic. Yet no one came to listen….

The plumbing hums in the walls, white tiles hosed down for an hour now in the room next to ours. It is a copy of our bathroom, it shares the same veins & arteries in the invisible kingdom that exists inside of walls, behind mirrors & medicine cabinets. She sits upright in bed, her breasts…

Monday a boy who cannot lift Even a hand to wave goodbye Comes to my office with his mother. She has pushed him in his wheelchair As she must have bathed and dressed him, Clipped his beard; knocked on my door. Now he tries to speak; he sputters. Leaning down his mother listens, Nodding at…

My love is not an MX missile. It is not a muskrat running in the suburbs. A hen is not my love, with it eyes of grub-intent, with its legs of loose leather bending backwards. My love is not a poacher, shins hard as scimitars leaning on his ivory, nor is my love the black…

The priest taught us that blessing oneself shouldn't be like shooing flies. There is a pause at the temple of your head; you connect one shoulder to the other with a thread of light; your wrist should be sincere as if conducting your body in song. *      *      * On long car trips it's okay…

At night the hands come to the face to push it together again. The hands know the terrain, have always known how the years leave behind fragments of the face. The fingers push the layers spread the skin around rub the cheekbones, find their place closest to the skull. Skin and bones of my spirit,…

The carnival doesn't rival the carwash. For a quarter, I could get my brother to ride on top and come out red as a letterjacket while the spray steamed through the window seams, a date's hand cupped the edge of my Bermudas, his lips opened on my neck. Then, as it dripped dry, the doors…