Poetry

The air opens like an invisible flower; the petals of night and day embrace. In the very center a rock stares into itself. Wandering stars come to rest in the shape of a skull. Men and women rush barefoot to the peak, drying their eyes on their frozen clothes. Tears of summer, tears of winter…

1. I lived as others do, avoiding death, deploring evils I dared not oppose, and making what I could of the distractions, until I woke one morning with the words: “There shall be neither rain nor dew these       years except according to my word; thus saith the Lord” — and I, as one still…

                only partly accounted for by the old delivery truck laden with bread      that hums up the coastline highway                      the redtail hawks switch to and fro on the crosswinds, they           drift towards sunrise and sunset                            stitching the wind of the east to the wind of the west

That morning there was no sun, only a powder of strong light as if two suns were shining. We awoke in an armistice of colors, colors hiding in the depths of themselves, their white Sunday clothes. Came noon, the bearer of fruits that assuage no hunger. In the testicles, joy: the sign that somewhere the…

(“If Innocent” is from The Idiot Princess of the Last Dynasty, a book-length collection of monologues spoken by Dr. Matthew Mighty-grain-o-salt Dante O’Connor, the character in Djuna Barnes’ novel Nightwood. O’Connor is an American Irishman from San Francisco, a flamboyantly homosexual, unlicensed gynecologist, and a non-stop raconteur. In “If Innocent” he recalls (for Ignace, his…

The Greek takes Trixie on midnight walk, not much talk except she points skunk and he runs after it. Which started Trixie thinking, “Gee this guy’s different. Maybe I feel better if I let him move in.” When she finds out his love ever after stuff means give up stripjoints cut down drugs — He…

We sit down at the table, with the herbs, the dish of salt, the plates and the broken bread. Everything is in order, everyone in his place peers out like a sentry from his skull, when the door opens and we see the palms of heaven. No one disturbs us, and yet news arrives: we…

Nothing like 10 in the morning for making love — cats glaring from the table opposite, the dog watching gloomily from the rug, and after, opening cans of their food, you in the shower singing while elevators ring up through the sidewalk, carrying their racks of dresses, the noises of ordinary business: unloading, loading. Later,…

In the garden a doe and fawn chew roses with pink geraniums. A grey three-legged cat lurching across the lawn freezes to sniff a gopher hole. Smooth as thin milk, a shiny snake flows into the ivy leaves. Lady-birds swarm in the air, like gnats. One living thing is still: a slimy slug, poor homeless…