Poetry

  • Floater

    It is always there, the blurry dot,the mark, so easy to dismiss,between you and the life you’re focused on,though more distinct with white behind it:a blowing curtain, a wedding gown,while pinning bed sheets on a line,a blank wall in a waiting room, and,late in life, while leaning on a shovel,resting, following a heavy snow.

  • The Window Mannequin

    I tie my hat—I crease my shawl (522)—Emily Dickinson is carried crown first through light that hums.Her country is built of two rooms: need and desire.Birds rarely come near. She cannot seeher shoes or the tops of buildings or the moon.She wonders if she is kind. She is as quietas a student in the back…

  • From the Museum of Failed Masters

    Here you will feel no ecstasy, no brightimperative to weep, or to give thanks,or to endure. Instead, we offer solacein what’s gaudy, saccharine, timid, tame:in trees rigidly perfect, Christs with too-whiteteeth, a sunset blushing at its own excess.The portraits here preserve the blind precisionof the novice, those who kept on polishinglong after likeness came, whose…

  • Social Security

    You have to feel your feelings Right now I feel amused, uncomfortable, tolerant,with a twist in my heart, as if I’m applyingfor a visa to the country of unhappiness and sorrowwhich gets mixed reviews on Trip Advisor.In this waiting room, we are all seedy & hopelessand the elephant gray plastic chairs are lined up like…

  • In High School

    I miss the charcoal drawing of gallium that hung in my chemistry class. How the metal whose melting point is below human body temperature was misspelled galium, how the hand cupping the silver goop stopped at the wrist. I don’t think it was meant to disturb, to invoke a caught thief. I don’t think the charcoal spreading…

  • A Postcard from St. Barts

    An Elvis impersonatorcurling his lipas he limbers up for “Return to Sender,”a wave may develop that slight curling of the liptill it becomes a sneer.Not that a wave may more than slightly develop.The character of Snare becomes a sneerno less than Master Fang,the character of Snarebeing in a funk no less than his buddy, Master…