Poetry

“Before placing me on your shelf, please take me by the feet and give me a few hard shakes to help restore that ‘just made’ look. Thank you.” I have been carrying these instruc­ tions around in my pocket for weeks, pulling them out at odd moments. I found them on the street and I…

I bought gasoline and ink (I did not buy booze, I did not buy the moon, I can no longer afford the moon). But moon moon what did you buy? A mosquito with a net, a plaything (air), a lantern lit by gasoline for your other side, side with stars, side by side with streams,…

Thousands of codfish Glitter in open Cases. They look So still on beds Of ice, I tiptoe Around them. Gutted, Dead instruments, They will not trill The high or low Seas again. They lie Quiet as knives. They, too, were feared By their lessers, Squid and mussels. Still, these losses move me little. Tomorrow they'll…

There was nothing to do on the island. The dogs chased glass lizards into the dense myrtle bush. I don’t know how the children slept. Men and women did what they could to extin­ guish the brightness of the stars.   One night my own supply of rum ran out, and I paced the verandah…

No one holds my silent mornings like a vase, the card for unhappiness represented by a single teardrop hovering over the vase. Aunt Vase, I call it, while Aunt Linda focuses on the golden sun as she centers my reading for me. But what I remember best is the snake in the grass, pronounced as…

A man comes home to find his wife in bed with the milkman. They're really going at it. The man yanks the milkman off by his heels so his chin hits the floor. Then he gets his gun. It looks like trouble for all concerned. Why is modern life so complicated? The wife and milkman…

Pigtails fiddles with my riverbed, she shoots some plutonium up my harpsicord. I am here in Holland up a nut tree. I walk the shopping mall in my pajamas. My cologne seems to intoxicate everyone. Deluded cattle walk out of the barbershop saying things like “Nice pajamas,” and “Didn't I see you at the golf…

I decided to never worry again when I could not see the stone, I decided the sky was there, even in the skyless night even when the family name awoke and roamed. The family name made so much noise! like the sea which had buried some other blood some other box of clothes which washed…

Some would have you think the Pony Express is dead. Don't believe it. It's only waiting. You know the letter you thought of writing to that woman you once loved, the one describing how you remembered her hair or hands or the curve of her chin? That's the sort of letter they now deal in,…