Poetry

for Jeffrey You have become the ocean for me now. No body of water, but your body, open over miles and miles of longing. No wave, no sweet sweep of release, but the pitch and thrust of urgency unbroken. No sound of sea or season, but for your voice, deep and full of a promise…

Aged a lot during our talk (you were gone). Left and wandered the streets for some hours— melodramatic, I know— poor, crucified by my teeth. And yet, how we talked for a while. All those things we had wanted to say for so long, yes—I sat happily nodding my head in agreement, but you were…

But what of those things we left In closets: pants and shirts too small; Notebooks filled with deliberate, looped Script; tedious games we were proud To admit we loved? As a child I loved Everything! On the back porch, housed Beneath a table, I sang the same song Over and over until my voice gave…

In the evening the couples came down from the hotel. It was summer and just past sunset. They walked along the river, the women in long dresses, the men in light-colored suits, while on the patio a boy played Scarlatti on the piano. The couples stood at the edge of the water and breathed deeply…

There is no sleep                 in the stillness of snow, in such                 an adoration                                       of freefall. Like a choir's           single inhalation, it seems to pause      between two songs. Sleep slips by me           in waiting for the sound.      Outside as in the laying down                            of walls, everywhere the snow      like…

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…

El dia del fin del mundo. . . yo grabaré mis iniciales en la corteza de un tilo sabiendo que eso no sirve para nada. — Jorge Teillier The day on which the world ends will of course be different in each place. Here it is raining, there snowing. Here the night shields the now…

Under the bed I found your old sock Like a bird peeking out The sleeve of my shirt. I plucked it up. So sad, little foot, Now it's in the pocket Of my coat for luck. Later in the earth I'll feed its nest, Worms a plenty In my good dark suit.

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…