Poetry

Although I am taking courses in the language of children, penguin socialization and creative writing, now, in my dotage — dotage, what a striking word — I find myself betrayed — betrayed — by what? Betrayed! That’s what it means to be human. First acceptance, then rage, then reiteration. Once dinner was always exactly at…

That plastic Buddha jars out a Karate screech Before the soft words with their spores The cosmetic breath of the gravestone Death invented the phone it looks like the altar of death Do not worship the telephone It drags its worshippers into actual graves With a variety of devices, through a variety of disguised      voices…

We’d met by chance. Once. Late at night. Me, off the ship Pireus harbour, banging loudly on your door for entry, shouting in the dark: Fo Fo! Fo Fo! You in there not answering. Busy? A friend? Fo Fo! Open up. It’s only me Fo Fo. Finally the door opens a measure on its chain…

Trunk, branches, leaves — sere and blemished — I am not what I wanted. Dignity is a hindrance. I am weighted with notions and unbalanced by fear. Night sweats, vapours. Why am I frightened alone on the street? Nothing’s here — a pair of brown squirrels — a few fallen apples — These rococco grimaces,…

Stop looking like a purse. How could a purse squeeze under the rickety door and sit, full of satisfaction, in a man’s house? You clamber towards me on your four corners— right hand, left foot, left hand, right foot. I love you for being a toad, for crawling like a Japanese wrestler and for not…

He’s everywhere here; not as he looks in his photos but in his mind, habits — that elegantly refined, withdrawn decadence. I glimpse or pass him everywhere: at night walking quickly down a back alley close to the walls’ shadow, afternoons in a teahouse alone glancing over the edge of his foreign newspaper, the rims…

We drive up the winding road lined by graying sycamores, a blessing in the summer heat. At a small table, between the stones, a man and two women nibble crustless sandwiches, pour from a silver pot of tea. They have their arrangements: dour frigidity of gladioli, faded dresses, a musty gentility. We have brought a…

It’s almost April here, Where a white moth flutters on the screen door, And I step inside without scaring it off, Without a sound, And turn, And see the body sprawled over the couch— His bruised face looking As if it listens to all voices at once, now . . . Though in the end…

“The people need poetry.” That voice That was last heard asking for warm Clothes and money, also knew the hunger We all have for the gold light The goldfinch carries into the air Like a tang of crushed almonds. “The Kremlin mountaineer” scaled The peak of atrocity, seeking The cold final barbiturate Tablet from the…