Poetry

The Point of No Return

Out of the dust and tall border grass of an airfield appears my father, not magically but in a photograph. A generation of fathers uniformed and standing, married, absent from the birth of their sons who will be weak soldiers and fight the war of an evil councillor. My father tells me about something he…

Cool Day in July

It’s too cold to swim, so you’re taking the children to the fire truck parade in a town somewhere near the place where you’re staying. Just as you’re ready to start, though, an ancient car pauses to let out a woman with a baby. It’s Anita. “But we didn’t even know you were coming— you…

To Create What?

Something small, like a new grassblade, or a word like love with the lies taken out of it, or a key that would unlock the doors I myself made. No hurricane, no revolution. Not even a small room where a sane scientist broods on the insanity he created. Something small, like a gesture as marvellous…

Dark All Afternoon

for Laura Jensen The boats are rented, complete with open sail, as if there were a map, somewhere to go, somewhere besides the cold and nautical Charles, one river wide, up and down, and slow. Even the moon right now, in love, in cloud, is piecemeal, something of a city ghost— something about the sun…

Paint ‘Til You Faint

House, house, go away, you’re looking prettier all the time and look me I’m a rag, a brush, a mop, a hammer. I’m your lowly employee not what I intended— I wanted shelter, a self-propelled houseboat. Housepainting for a fortnight now, I have no idea how long I’ve been stroking white up down back forth…

Springtide

As time and time when I am broken I think of you, when young, there fills the unintelligible ocean with flood tide and a thousand sails. The shore of trouble is then hidden, the wrack of each sorrow and each reef, and round my feet there is the silken rubbing of an unbroken grief. Why…

Anthony

Your absent name at rollcall was more present than you ever were, forever on parole in the back of the class. The first morning you were gone, we practiced penmanship to keep our minds off you. My fist uncoiled chains of connecting circles, oscilloscopic hills; my carved-up desk, rippled as a washboard. A train cut…

Slow Blues for the Pilgrim

     You and you my masters Though you have told me exactly what to do Are now no longer wanted, I cannot bother To imitate your actions nor your heroes —John Cornford At least we were all well read Those books on barricades tear gas the wars civil Or world won in the name of any…