Poetry

He had spent the morning shooting birds out of the air. Along the lower edge of the field he worked each week, the dog pressed before him through tall, autumn grasses, pressed ahead, then stopped. Birds burst up toward the light, up into the perforated air. Among the hardwoods, between their roots and the creek…

Regarding the insides of flowers: this is something about which I have meant to write you for a long time. How awkwardly, but to a bee fascinating it must seem, going in to their sticky centers, half- repellent, touching their furry genitalia; horrible to love and seek so, being dependent: flowers’ perfectly formed hemispheres, the…

I feel most alone when someone calls me by name. Even though there are times I’m completely withdrawn: when the woman beside me, as she’s speaking abstractly, seems more alive than in bed; and although her breathing reminds me we’ll be on our own sooner or later, I feel most alone when someone calls me…

The interior is ordinary although at times the light falls like sand, the furniture edges into itself and the far corners of the room relax like seascapes in the numb hours. Everything changes when a man enters the room, especially for women. A woman who is there is unable to leave although she is uncomfortable,…

My father keeps a circle of silver coins around his bed to trap angels. When they arrive to reclaim his soul the silver disintegrates the strange alloy in their wings. My mother poises at a snow-circle’s center in a game of “fox & geese” while her children disappear down a radius into some woods forever….

For Jon Anderson The unhappy . . . will fight shy of Kierkegaard, either because they are not as unhappy as they pretend, or because they really despair of comfort and cling, in defiance, to their suffering! —W. H. Auden I said I could not have built my community Without the other. I will not…

We are in her kitchen; we have one enormous pot and all the spices are together. We are too tiny and take so long to sterilize the jar; finally, more water is boiling, waiting. We don’t have to call, she hears and comes into her kitchen. We lift her over the pot. she slips into…

What human love can compare To the compassion of fishes? For us, the kisses of the mouth Are enough, but for them It isn’t too much To open their whole insides To receive one of their children To bring him out again unharmed To reanimate him with their heat To revive them To live as…

She’s heard that apples go silver in moonlight, That the lavender cloud Of phlox along the wall Is absorbed by rocks, and that even The steady, village church is eaten away On a night like this. They told her when the moon shines Through a stained-glass window, there are no Reds or blues crossing the…