Poetry

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…

I get there with a huge sack slung over my shoulder: brown, with patches. The gate is locked, the moon up like a thumb. I came through the forest where the spider balances on its web, carrying eggs for the branch. I came through the valley where the slow rope of mountain climbers let themselves…

I tried to say the truth But the truth kept going away. It always belonged to somebody else, It kept refusing to belong to me. This got up my fighting spirit As I said, the truth belongs to me, I will show it to you, listen to me, I have the truth locked in my…

Atomized grandmother, recluse, generation gone to fragments, I am above Chicago for the last time, meeting you outside the window, still alone in your lonely particles. A drift of shattered lace and bones. I fly through your rising dust, cutting through like a scythe, above you and with you. And now we are flying together,…