Poetry

And once, for no special reason, I rode in the back of the pickup, leaning against the cab. Everything familiar was receding fast—the mountain, the motel, Huldah Currier’s house, and the two stately maples . . . Mr. Perkins was having a barn sale, and cars from New Jersey and Ohio were parked along the…

The aweful terror of the night. The daylight never dawning. The crows caw cawing. The phoebe’s final sounding. Day is endless. TV whining. Ads of soap. Terrored yawning. The twitching hands. The restless feet. Endless rapping.      Gnashing teeth. Boredom, unforgivable sin, the Holy Ghost bends with      heaviness. Haldowed maze. No diamond clear. No key. No…

Only a spider, a small missionary of sadness I swallowed somehow when I was distracted. Laughter broke easily her thin restraints, the delicate geometry of the nets but, patient architect, she drew more lines, reinforced the structure until laughter ceased. Only a small spider who came in one day of rain or of sunshine, one…

I’m going to give up my little tufts of grief clustered like weeds that edge the highway. I meant to drive until a town fanned light through the spired stalks. It may never happen. When you asked me to remember the first things, I told you a yellow house, the field behind it and the…

                 for Darren A grooved disc, a sliver of diamond, and the music rises; His darkened eyes, the ribbon of birth Cut: and the influential squawl Thrilling the air            —within which breath is drawn, Within which the race is to the quickest, Within which the race stories itself—                              rises;…

By coincidence, the summer of this pregnancy is the time when the scientists choose, once and for all, to find the Loch Ness monster. I read this morning they are using sonar, a useful tool, the obstetrician tells me, for gauging maturity by determining the size of the head: “So there won’t be any surprises.”…

     A round in three parts I When I was a child I had a governess whom I despised. We slept in the same room. She stole my dreams. I, in turn, stole coins from her leather purse. I threw them out the window. Since we lived in Canada and it was wintertime, there was snow…

Listen, those of you with bones, To the ceremonies of attention. My first son, age six, hit his brother, age three, With a baseball bat. When he had gone to bed I asked him, severely, to remember When he got hit with a baseball bat Two years ago. He started to cry And when I…

This headache musters in my skull slowly growing dense enough to screen your face, but your arms are sprouting like vines dropping in coils on the rug overgrowing the hidden backs of chairs while, from the dusky tangle of arms an occasional hand flashes. Your legs jam the doorways as rigid as fallen trees. I…