Poetry

For my father In your orange flight suit, you approached the Renault we knew might stall after a hard winter freeze. With your pilot’s hand, you turned the engine. When it caught, I ran down the walkway you had shoveled. Cinderella lunch-box under my arm, I climbed in the frozen capsule, and waited for you…

I lived among a people who said, pig, for luck. They might have said stork or      flounder for these beings were familiar to them, as were rat and donkey. But they said, pig. No doubt from ingrained habit. Real pig, fella. Some pig you had, my friend. What pig. Good pig! Hey, have a piggy…

God said He would destroy Earth’s violent flesh, but spare me. Was there gratitude enough for such a burden? My family blessed Him. They built the ark according to His dimensions, cubit by square cubit. He was specific, demanding gopher wood, three stories pitched within, one window, and two of every creature. Opening a door…

Most ancient Metaphysics, (poor Metaphysics!) All decked up in imitation jewelry. We went for a stroll, arm in arm, smooching in public Despite the difference in our age. It was still the 19th century, she whispered. We were in a knife-fighting neighborhood Among some rundown relics of the Industrial Revolution. Just a little further, she…

Simon’s house was elegant, with spacious apartments. I like to think lilacs fell from my hair. Simon himself was dignified, secure. It was a supper of powerful men; I crouched under the table, at the feet of the man I loved, applying ointment to His feet, out of the usual desire. Tonight the table is…

Are these mellifluous sheep, And these the meadows made twice-melliferous by their      bleating? Is that the famous mechanical wind-up shepherd Who comes with instructions and service manual? This must be the regulation white fleece Bleached and starched, And we could be posing for our first communion pictures, Except for the nasty horns. I am beginning…

I did not know, any longer, the meaning of my happiness; it held me unexplained. Eudora Welty Out I would go, as if out were a city, and I was buoyant and self-absorbed, my own climate, though like a pond my city held its own warm and chill districts aloof to the good news and…

It bears no correlation to the living world. It is as if a malice toward all things malleable, mutable, had seized the universe and emptied its spherical alleys. How could you think it, that I would choose to stay, or break under the journey back? Like a dog I had followed your unravelling skein of…

I’ve read the propaganda, and I believe it now. I shoulda bought a van de- signed to squush a cow. Small cars are “unforgiving.” They crumple up like foam. It takes a heap o’ living To make a house a home, and if a heap o’ heap’ll satisfy some people, then who am I to…