Poetry

For those who are neither hero of myth nor witness to history: remember all life is holy. In the year of the blizzard in the month of February I have traipsed up the middle of Lexington Avenue, a spectacular middle passage in the snow to my own poetry reading: James Wright, Philip Levine, each having…

From his travels, my grandfather used to send postcards. Among the pile of letters, they lay thin as turned leaves, their postage stamps shining with luminous moths and fish. The pictures always showed what he had seen: “This Persian rug was woven by girls your age. It’s the same shape as the floor of their…

You tell me you will be my true false bottom to my suitcase more luggage than anyone can carry. The snow falls easily at first as if it were meant to be as if it had no choice then harder as if it were leaving home. At home we watch the snow through windows of…

There is nothing like distance to create objectivity, and exclusion gives rise to counter values. —Ralph Ellison You greet me as “brother,” evocations of Sterling Brown and Ralph Bunche and Martin Luther King, Jr. who sat in your apartment after the Nobel ceremonial hectoring of Vietnam and world order, the great diameter of poverty. Your…

The women who clean fish are all named Rose or Grace. They wake up close to the water, damp and dreamy beneath white sheets, thinking of white beaches. It is always humid where they work. Under plastic aprons, their breasts foam and bubble. They wear old clothes because the smell will never go. On the…

To be alive to witness the snakes’ return to chase the papists and britons from Faerieland allowing Patrick’s sisters prayers to Druid gods: O pagan green! Mo Chraoibhin Cno! Siobhan, throw your ribbon round the last six. Braid them tightly, let them rest close on the velvet hills: O pagan green! Mo Chraoibhin Cno! And…

for Katherine Who knows why we talk of death this evening, warm beyond the measure of breath; it will be cool tomorrow for in the waters off Long Beach my brother’s ashes still collect the flowers of my mother and father, my sister dropped in the vase of a face they made of old places,…

(for Peppino) We loiter in the cobblestone alley, Beans, Clams, Yom-Yom and me smoking punk. Snip the wiry stem, trim the nubby end, scratch fire from a zipper, then pass the stink around. William Penn designed these city blocks, rectangular, brick, cross-hatched by alleys to prevent the spread of fire. So fire climbs down my…

There are times that falter like flowers in front of me, and times that take root in my chest like a change of heart. Certain kinds of foliage respond to me. Ferns, for example, are onlookers. There are also flowers that have died, only to be born again like old opinions. Perhaps it’s true that…