Poetry

  • Obit

    Civility—died  on  June  24, 2009, atthe age of 68. Murdered by a strokewhose    paintings    were     recentlyfeatured  in  a  museum,  two  whitesquare  canvases,  black  scissors  inthe  middle  of  each,  open,  pointingat   each   other.   After   my   father’sstroke,     my    mother    no     longerspoke  in  full   sentences. Fragmentsof  codfish,  the  language  of  savages,each   syllable   a   mechanical   dartfrom   her   mouth.   Maybe   this   iswhat     happens     when     languagefails,  a  last  breath  inward  but  nobreath  outward.  A  state  of  holdingone’s  breath  forever  but  not  dying.When     her     lungs     began     theirfailing,  she …

  • Moon Cricket

    I have been living           despite myselfmy territory hemmed by mud and threatof mud          If there is a land without its ownsubliminal violences          this night offers nodefense of what has died in it          Some thingsare only nourished in a stutter of kudzuand the inconsistencies of silver the moonshucks off           Casual machines honey the darkwith the monotony of their health…

  • Tha-Tha-Tha-Tha-That’s All, Folks

    I’m enthralled by a cartoon’s coercion. Behind me, seen in the television’s reflection—exaggerated colors, animations—children whisperingbeside the slumbered old menthat gravel-in-teeth language: fuck, shit. I still yearn for youth, to imagine algorithms of birds,waddling outside on the lawn, the boys chasingfeathers, and the girls braiding a mother’s dahliain a beast’s night-black wings. Ah!—there’s the dawn-touch…

  • The Vault

    Bit by bit I’ll go on surviving. Love like the sheets tumbled soft. Miles of snow outside Lisbon. Before turning the camera to the window, Soon, I’ll let you go. They say that love continues. That the ghosts or angels will usher us home. February again, & the table begs for fruit. And what do…

  • At the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

    Georgia, forgive me. For years I’ve carried this grief like a hoop of bone, framing everything I see: fragments of water, fragments of earth. No visible wound, no body  to bury, no song for safe passage to whatever the next world brings. I must be the only person here not asking, Where are the flowers? Fuck the flowers, those…

  • Cultural Revolution

    Humpbacks in journey rendered,          in Eastern Australian watersan Indian Ocean air. How pleading           tones jump across continents intorivers of sound scientists call non-          human revolution, perplexes. Perhaps a singer lost course and migrated          east from Antarctic feeding grounds.Did whitecaps trick or force; before           he forged a life worth its music? Hisvoice haunts night-oceans in silver;          intones his own dialect…

  • Ars Poetica

    In my Fresno, there are no prerequisites,just a frontage road inside the fence floppedto the west. The cover charge for a poetic identityis delegitimized alongside white aesthetics—between the rows welting the earth’s still dustlike corduroy.                                                   On one side, almond trees, pistachios.Fieldworker housing spray-painted with ads.The fervent recall of history from poets in the traditionhover in…