Poetry

(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,…

It's last call when a man you've met asks if you'd like a black russian. All night, he's talked sports and half- listened to you. Still—he has a lean body and luxurious beard and you like lean bodies and luxurious beards. So you nod and take little sips of vodka and kahlua. Sandwiched in a…

We are not there now, we are never Driving into the fog (in love but, having decided This is wrong, not touching) On our way to Stinson beach. Taking the hard way, anyway, There were road signs, CONSTRUCTION AHEAD DETOUR, into a mist that became Progressively heavier until, at last, It was almost—caught in your…

Hesitate? The wide long river’s Extravagance Decrees the boundaries of my insouciance, confides how Little, how hourly less, it cares For the parallel blunders of its Parallel banks, twin antinomies, Wind-wrinkled water’s edgy lapping, Mammered quibbles among pebbles, Clishmaclaver, quaggy and wearisome Thoughts of no stature, Windlestraw, zilch-billows, death- Blusters. Lord lift me above my…

Tuned for the big spenders. Hardly an unbroken bone in your body. Now you know why your mama wanted to give you just one kind scar in the right place. You're in these snapshots dancing the cha-cha, doing the dog with a sailor from Chattanooga. The good life poured from a green bottle, a cigar…

More than the rich white meat or the feathers Grandma might use to make a hat, there was some thrill in killing a gorgeous thing, even in simply slamming to a halt the car and all our desultory attention — then the shot, and burnt trace of it, smell that tastes of blood in your…

Strict eyes only for the naked sheet I’ll whip and goad to disloyalty Then soothe to loyalty again Before its day is out; lax eyes for all Atoms else; no eyes for the unmeasured Anatomy of the scrutinizing, male past. *     *      * My odds-sniffing, instinctively hesitant Odd friend Hamlet, my poor skeptical hamster, First loved…

A funny thing happened last night, Betty-Lou. We were out celebrating Willie's promotion at the plant, having a grand old time. Candlelight, champagne, roses, a hundred-dollar dinner at The Palace. You won't believe how fast it came over him. A finger snap. A cornered look on his face when a Vietnamese waitress walked over to…

It was a way to toy with the warning against playing in the woods at evening, the winner being the one whose bike glided in farthest, riderless, before crashing. They all would coast down the three-block hill with their legs tucked under and feet on the seats, then leap where the road ends abruptly at…