Poetry

Quartered, cleaned, this beautiful black wire looped and      knotted through the skin, the squash hung on the porch. All September they puckered, cracked. Then they were dry. They clicked a little when the wind made its way past them: hollow sounds, almost pleasing—      cupped hands clapping a bit for themselves when we weren’t looking. November…

The cord throbs in your hand. So it all went well. Now darkness comes to the farm, rising in the barn like water, leveling the fields. Tonight, will the sheep fend for each other, will the fences hold? That rope goes slack. Your son’s mouth widens, like the pupil of your eye, to the labors…

I have a dream of my mother whose black hair hardens like the black pebbles of Brazil. She would make a shell of herself. I don’t trust her, but it doesn’t matter. She is striking glass with a glass. She is foolish, and has every hope to appear in this poem as a refined woman….

This close to the green sea, wild geranium and Nootka lupine all around, one does not need cathedrals to see God. God humbles himself; He walks among the white crosses on the bluff, among the graves nodding with chocolate lilies, buys Pepsi and sunglasses at the general store, cuts bait for halibut, stands in stench…

Each drop of rain is a fraction of a second. It rains all night. If the rain on one leaf could be heard it would be the sound of one life passing. The women nursing her mother thinks at night she sees what she is made of. She is so tired that even with her…

Sense the roosted owl in its bush, the field windy with crickets, the loose cantata of your bull-frogged pond. Beneath her fresh spine, the earth turns with skill Prepare to gather coat and hat, her toy, her growing body from the flesh-crushed hay, to hear the anger of her wakening in your well-meant arms.

While I dress someone sits at a table, someone in the country pulls water from a well. I rake furiously through my hair. As for the others, one moves a chair closer, one writes a love poem. *     *      * Though I have read of them, Rasputin and Houdini are dead. They like to sleep because…

The brownstone facade’s lit up and guarded; inside, a frayed partition. A child stuffs his pockets full of stolen turnips, and women gather together the folds of their white dresses. A man leans against the doorjamb, watching the black plumes file past. With one knee bent in a posture of strength he picks the youngest….

It is to sleep in barns among dumb beasts. It is to choose to breathe that farted air. It is to sleep encumbered, yet alone; to learn how many pounds of blanketing can’t keep you warm. It is to want the fire and watch the fire go out; it is to need the chemistry of…