Poetry

On a Name

Why does a girl love a girl? Why do you still have messages for me? Descending the stairs in the tubercular house every Easter morn      Melanie would come upon a group of Quaker women they glided over in drabs and whispered things to her alone in her father’s barn she would tell me this while…

Immediately Upon Landing

my husband looks at me some evenings as if I were about to leave his home. it’s a stolen look one I’ve grown familiar with this last month. it’s there in his eyes over breakfast but more frequently and lingeringly after dinner. he’ll sit in the grey leather chair his legs crossed his flannel trousers…

Evening News I,

We have been there      and seen nothing Nothing has been there      for us to see In what a beautiful silence      the death is inflicted In a dazzling distance      in the fresh dews And morning lights      how radiantly In the glistening      the village is wasted. It is by such sights      the eye is instructed

Bodybuilder

He is pulling blood in, trying to be strong in the mirror. The word gives him trouble and he pushes it away, wondering, what will come now? who will come? All his adventures are in his mind. The large muscles serve no one. He dreams of Germany and hopes to be a policeman. He would…

Thank You Note

I want to let you know we enjoyed the visit The large spaces were filled food was excellent stayed up late, laughed at what was funny Everyone wished they were there Slept until we woke walked in the city It was good to see you you were beautiful The rooms in your house are you…

Evening News II,

The face looking into the room; Behind it light, shaking, like heat Lightning; the face calm and knowing; Seeing but not seeing who I am; The mouth maybe telling something. Something about our helplessness; Something about the confusions of beasts; The consequence of error; systems Haywire, or working; the stars gone All wrong in the…

My Priest Father’s Words

Your words, my father, are clouds, spirits to inhabit, things to trace in the changes of light. Where fish dart in the shallows and the sun follows on the rise of the island, in the circle of birds, your “historia scholastica” will vanish, like these clouds, each a life with its own shadow on the…