Poetry

Illumination from a Psalter

I am not immune to your pleas of transformation. Today I burned all my socialist verse. Outdoors, a gust of wind lifted the oak leaves into a momentary show of hands. To build a life, brimming, like roses after rain, we pour contents from flask to flask, to float some dream. Yesterday we fed the…

New Neighbors in the South

If only a quiet taxidermist moved in this time! Imagine, he’d sew fox paws all night, polish the delicate nails until they shone like black glass. Or a silent movie actress running her old films with shaking, arthritic hands, the reels barely clicking. Why not a crabby postman unpacking canvas sacks stuffed with dead letters…

Dyslexia

A god was a time tub and A mane was a name but God mite saw and but a Tub dog—saw and mite a Saw saw dog but was god Was tub but saw a but Saw dan—was a time tub But god was a time and Shut up Art Garfunkel Uskers

Bathroom Walls

A woman sobs on the toilet. Hearing her through the wall, I imagine the pink lace unraveled from her nightgown as she strokes her knees. Upstairs there’s a pop. I suppose a retired barber spread lather on a balloon to test his swollen hands; now he’ll hang himself. No, perhaps two teenagers shyly undressing for…

His Other Life

On Boul Miche Idling at the curb In a rented car, Ready to go. But I have forgotten something! It’s my hat, of course: “Of all things Why would Daddy forget His darling hat?” I leave the motor running, Bolt through the great doors And past the concierge. Horns are blowing Out there where I…

A Great Sensibility

     You live among the remnants of an ancient civilization that has left behind it an intricate system of canals and waterways. No one understands the books and rituals your ancestors handed down to you, but somehow everybody assumes that it must be necessary to maintain the waterways to irrigate the rice crop.      Only at the…