Poetry

As a child I was radiant.The land grew irradiated corn and roses,tomatoes large and abundant. Swallows and catfishcarrying the isotopes into the water and woods.The sun rose each day, while the shadowsof trees concealed government laboratorieswhere my father worked.I grew up listening to the tap clickof the Geiger counter. I grew up listeningto clicks on…

The basement floods, but he doesn’t mind.He’s busy as the hundreds of workers you never seein his prints of Inland Steel, those millsthat don’t have windows saying the darkis all there is, like Monopoly houses,and blast furnaces, oil tanks and ladderswhite as lighthouses. Everyone you never seeso focused. Everywhere you look, bright gravelswept into mounds…

It’s the nut house in my imagination.Why Mom and Dad put him awayis a mystery. Something about leavinghome so you can see it better.He takes a seat in the empty hall.Write about home, they tell him. Once in a blue moon we meet him for dinnerdown the block from the place they call a home,which…

Do you remember the two types of eternity, how we learnedabout them in a Wegmans parking lot, when you turned on the radio, the classical channel? Whywere they even talking about eternity, what did it have to do with the suddenlybroody guitars? You had a peach Snapple, I remember the snappy kissy sound of the…

Let us admit there has been division enough; our teeth, its simplest actors. Let us admitthe past—our translucent bodies’ betrayal: good natures’ good windows. We were, weren’t we, moveable?Series of solid matters sected. Mid-life and un-mothered, historical warnings hum, “Don’t split the pole—” so as not to forget oneself              so as not to be beguiled by…

I too have had my hands full of what keeps me contained, a vastness softened           by restraint and made more terrible because of it.                     I think it’s time we talk about the safety of distance, how the tire tread of rush hour traffic sounds like something being patiently worn down, how the cars parked along…

On reprieve          from the rainbut not the heat— we watch it          gather like flowersor the men who build a house in fits          & startsacross the street. They saw          & nail whatI can’t see—a coffin cut to measure,          or wedding dresssewn closed along the pinked seams.          The earthstitched shut above the heads          of the dead—whose hands, before buried, held flowers          or rosariesor only each…

Of us there is          always less.The days hammer past, artificial daisies          at the grave.Words I didn’t choose for my father’s headstone          & those that came insteadto live around my neck, dog tags a tin          pendulum on my chest.On my mother’s side, my cousin, too young,          dirt a pile above herbut no stone, nothing but the tinfoil name          from the funeral home—the…

What does          the water want?Enters where it is not          welcome, jacksup the foundation uneven          & splits the woodlike a look— it rusts          it rustsrusts the roof through— drops by unannounced          when your house a mess,rifles through Mama’s drawers, papers, borrows          books for weeks& returns them waterlogged, dogged,          without no note—or knock—plucks baby pictures          out their frames& blurs all the names—          endless,oblivious, it apologizes          & blesses&…