Poetry

In all the cathedrals of Europe I’ve seen only one smiling angel, feathered wings like the others, blasted by war. She’s famous not only because she’s smiling but because of the smile. It might be that the harvest is fine, but I don’t think so: too much reflected mischief in her face. As if a…

Take away death, the last enemy—; and my own flesh shall be my dear friend throughout eternity.                                    —Augustine Watching myself,                  naked,                              in the mirror—;      My penis thickens, erect. For what? It      Is the mind bleeding through the body      Into the light.                  The…

     My mother was dying. I didn’t know that, didn’t know why I couldn’t be at home when she had left the hospital to be there. He would take me to Lucile’s and leave me and I’d hate it. I’d worry that I’d have to stay and go on living there like one of hers, like…

“In business you have to know people. . . Try selling frozen pizza in the North End—it’s like shoveling shit against the tide; the more `ethnic’ the neighborhood, the more they like to start from scratch. Everything fresh! Wait a generation, they’ll change. . . Then, move in.” *     *      * “Are you saying it was…

I still love Ruta Beautiful Ruta The girl I never met In the bathtub I’m always humming The melody of a song I never heard Even now I taste The pastries I never ate At that garden café In Vienna Each morning I rise And watch my corpse Resting on the bed

I He smoked those stubby black cigars      my father smoked and like my father would not smile      for photographs. But mounting a horse the color of straw      or rising at dawn to tour the blossom littered fields      he paid the camera little mind, and kept his coattails      turning to history. That spring the sound of…

for Dee Dog, Dreaming There is always something; and past that something Something else: Jarrell’s words lingering as late in our house the wild skid of a car overrides the night’s news, snow icing blind the world. I nod from room to room, remembering all these somethings come to nothing. I come to you in…

I’ve got a feeling that moves me deep inside oh yeah I’ve got a feeling I think I’ll put it into verse oh yeah in fact this feeling of mine is almost an idea, or a pair of ideas with a feeling attached, or rather the two ideas swim in the feeling like eccentric bathers…

Composed of air, and thus always composed in silence, sharing the sun’s color, jointweed, poverty grass, british soldiers, do not bend as the wind passes nor breathe with more garrulous greenery. Inland from the salt wash, they wear the shifty winter out with waiting, and summer too, tight-lipped as stone, neither reckless in growth nor…