Poetry

The Priest

Sacrificing to the four quarters I find the winds responsive. The rains come and I wish them here. I walk without shoes in the rain. Once from a bush a voice spoke to me— from the old brown skull of a murdered man: he told me his life story. Hearing, I knew it once more….

Beasts Belong To Themselves

for my friend Sweeney Post, American Legion Hall, was cold with dead spots in the boards. We practiced with herniated basketballs and rural cheerleaders. In Brooklyn, you finally screwed your Jewish Princess, mourning for her father. We lost      an infant. A big Irish nurse ate her one morning in the sunroom before the ward grew…

The Skywriter

I Five miles up, winds unravel to their different colors. The pilot gazes at the lost land. Velvet cows plod between seams of a checkerboard, green and yellow squares. The land reduces to a puzzle of primary colors. If anyone looked up they would see his plane disappear, just as he watches them melt like…

The Yeti

The yeti, experts will attest, is physically unkempt at best, and due to this may go for weeks alone among the snowy peaks. Abominable and unique, this salient Tibetian freak is sometimes sighted in the mists, thereby confounding folklorists. No friendly woodsman brings him wine so high above the timberline, and no small bird cajoles…

Landmarks

Don’t turn around. It is the expected behind us, we have only to move forward along the stalk of surprise as it grows and branches. It is winter. The trees march away from the window like the ghostly skeletons of fish. They take me from this place, stalks that lead to the next season, landmarks…

The Green Violinist

Bigger than houses, than in fact the whole village including the church which falls out the bottom, he’s in space, a purple motley against pale ground. He’s a 3-legged stool, with the aid of a chimney. High, he plays himself sick, or well. The green advances or retreats, face and bow hand have it. A…

The Perfect Crime

Her eyes beguile as only the eyes of the beautiful dead can beguile and beckon: as eye-signs in a rebus of painful desire. In her wan complexion, a golden aura endowed by our staring enhances her presence, detailing her sudden, decisive autonomy. And how to proceed? In the light of her murder each clue is…