Poetry

A Christmas forest dies along West Ninth Street. There is no disease. Men come home from work, drag the little northern pines shedding their fishbone needles down narrow, carpeted stairs. Noble logs now, hirsute & dog-high, stand at my side, pettable — Looking down on this thing, I see my left shoe is scuffed &…

In these nights, I lay on my side, curl-up like an ear, and wait for the blank wafer called sleep, the dark hesitation between day and day; wait for the comma in the white noise of life. I have counted all my bones; aloneness is cold. I need you, father seed, to come back, to…

On it lives one bird who commences singing, for some reason best known to itself, at precisely 4 a.m. Each day I listen for it in the night. I too have a song to say alone but can't begin. On it, surrounded by blocks of black warehouses, is located this room. I say this room,…

Popsicle stick is the diminutive of tongue depressor, it is a serious implement to contemplate, you reach with your little pink chocolated hands, you want more— my large clean hand withdraws what was once the ice cream bar I shared with my baby son, we cleaned it with our last licks, & I dry it…

In the drafty land of a day's work, where bone saws sing down to the tone of marrow, these men in white coats live out my dream surgeons gone wild. Outside, I hear the mallet man, halting the morning between eyes with his dull thud, and the knife of the skinner slips beneath hides, the…

Let it start to rain, the streets are empty now. Over the roof hear the leaves coldly conversing in whispers; a page turns in the book left open by the window. The streets are empty, now it can begin. I am not there. Like you I wasn’t present at the burial. This morning I have…

We are not mentioned by others, never greeted by friends. We return to a place and follow a mystery to its little hole. The sky had no imprint, it rained the way ink drips off newspapers, and we hid behind that year as if behind a blank billboard. Perhaps a cold observer could have written…

“. . . half-lit with whiskey“ — Seamus Heaney half with wit and this long night is illuminated for its full many hours. My friend is this bottle; and my friend is raising her glass. Here's to you, bottle and friends, glowing with the compassion adequate liquor brings us. No work tomorrow; and no one…

The South China Sea drives in its herd of wild blue horses. We go at the volleyball like a punchingbag: Clem's already lost a tooth & Johnny's got a kisser closing his left eye. Frozen airlifted steaks burn on a wire grill, & miles away we hear machineguns go crazy. Pretending we're somewhere else, we…