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fell early this morning, long before we awoke so that by the time we had dressed, had coffee, there was no trace of it anywhere. All afternoon, I couldn't put my finger on what was missing. You said it was probably nothing or only me distorting the facts again. But in my usual way I…
I catch this glimpse of you wheeling your shopping cart along our empty street I see your nakedness And stepping from my car with my briefcase, wanting to catch you before you disappear in the doorway, I also express our odd jobs fighting the vacancy, and the solitude.
The cows once believed that if you stand in a pond shaped like a circle during the full moon you'll die. That was everyone's first summer and it finally got so hot the animals decided to hire another cow to go in the water. Just to be sure. This was a cow nobody cared much…
This could be any city, the poor parts, poverty both camouflaged and signaled by unplowed snow. The morning paper still lies on the doorstep, touched only by the cold gloves of a boy who moves in his own world from house to house, past a silhouette pulling a sweater on, to a woman who answers…
My heart and my bones wince. It's so damn sad-looking and ugly, The Bronx— Driving past those small hills Blighted for miles with brick Desert-similar apartment buildings: The landscape I come from. It's so damn ugly in its torment Of knifings and fires, I forget I was happy there, sometimes, In its damp and dingy…
(Letter to Gary in St. Paul) Silenter, emptier, never. The sky's overcast, your weather's now mine. I am troubled in a hundred places— And contradicted, contradicted— By the dull light. Polyphonic weather, Eminentest mood-tinker, sensitivest Most biological face of the physical Globe, least durable, least endurable: Accelerate my ascent and erosion, Erode my nascent ascents,…
The night my sister wiggled into her black sheath and shielded her first corsage, I took a deep breath and learned about love: how sweet the flower, how the delicate blossom would bruise. I don't remember the boy's name, if my sister had a good time, only a new kind of sadness that was all…
The words I try to write to you, pressing The pen against your silence, against your silence Fail. I should send you The blank pages, with their blue lines So near the surface (the places You let me kiss you, inside the elbow, The back of the knee. . .), or I should lie to…
(Letter to Clyde Rykken) Empty church, perplexingly uplifting Morning. I swept the sanctuary twice; Palm-spears, and the corn-silk nerve-threads palms spawn, Eluded my diligentest brooming. The sacristy will smell like a hay-loft 'til the end of Pentecost. The parish (Shame! I resist the pun, 'pon my sexton's Whisky oath. Shilling for the new grave! Ah,…
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