Poetry

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…

Resting Place

In every direction from here the uneven hills make a great earthly bowl which we live in. My heart has arrived in the countryside— and would have me consider, on occasion, its increase. Every morning our dog sleeps in the field in the sun. When she dies I will bury her there, deep so the…

The Aquarium Lesson

In water so clear it is taken for air, these fish maneuver like pilots: light-headed, they tilt their rudders for balance. To one side, a plaque tells how a fish may possess a “swimbladder”: filled, it suspends him weightlessly like a still ball whirling on a fountain. We forget this has only to do with…

Dolls

                 Not dolls! Beware      the child who plays with them,            who handles little                  men and women      which may even, like us,                        have names to be called by and live in rooms,                  scale models of      home: then beware, the child            who plays with dolls plays      …

Flowers

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…

Conviction

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 Even though there are times I’m completely withdrawn: when the woman beside me, as she’s speaking abstractly, seems more alive than in bed; and although her breathing reminds me we’ll be on our own sooner or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

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,…

Circles

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….