Poetry

Five Notes on Sex

1 It can be fun, it can be grotesque. Also, it can be great. Most people agree on this; a few toughened anti-romantics will never say it out loud; it’s the truth; but it’s also true that often it isn’t even good — the demon of poor timing hops into bed and screws you both….

Driving through Nebraska

I’m going to give up my little tufts of grief clustered like weeds that edge the highway. I meant to drive until a town fanned light through the spired stalks. It may never happen. When you asked me to remember the first things, I told you a yellow house, the field behind it and the…

Turntables

                 for Darren A grooved disc, a sliver of diamond, and the music rises; His darkened eyes, the ribbon of birth Cut: and the influential squawl Thrilling the air            —within which breath is drawn, Within which the race is to the quickest, Within which the race stories itself—                              rises;…

Secret Animals

By coincidence, the summer of this pregnancy is the time when the scientists choose, once and for all, to find the Loch Ness monster. I read this morning they are using sonar, a useful tool, the obstetrician tells me, for gauging maturity by determining the size of the head: “So there won’t be any surprises.”…

Baby and Child Care

Listen, those of you with bones, To the ceremonies of attention. My first son, age six, hit his brother, age three, With a baseball bat. When he had gone to bed I asked him, severely, to remember When he got hit with a baseball bat Two years ago. He started to cry And when I…

Husband

This headache musters in my skull slowly growing dense enough to screen your face, but your arms are sprouting like vines dropping in coils on the rug overgrowing the hidden backs of chairs while, from the dusky tangle of arms an occasional hand flashes. Your legs jam the doorways as rigid as fallen trees. I…

Grazing

In this new town, I need to know      where to buy grain, grapefruits      by the case, a round of cheese. Neighbors offer a way of making      sauerkraut and soap.      But I mostly like the words. And those I meet who might be friends      have children now full grown. I want to meet whole generations. I…

A Figure on the Ice

1            The last thing I remember when I was a boy In the North winter I’d line the barrels up Sixteen or eighteen abreast across the pond And back off, way off, and hone my blades and paw At the ice, then skate full on, take soaring to the air And land on barrel…