Poetry

     Even a Pyrrhonist Who knows only that he can never know      (But adores a paradox) Would admit it’s getting dark. Pale as a wrist-      Watch numeral glow, Fireflies build a sky among the phlox,      Imparting their faint light Conservatively only to themselves.      Earthmurk and flowerscent Sweeten the homes of ants. Comes on the night      When…

1. Georgia Black train flying north, Rita’s hat Awfully large and with a white ribbon, Legs crossed, cheap novel in her lap, Fingers casual on a bright necklace; Someone across the aisle is snapping Newspaper pages and blowing cigar smoke— This game of American spaces is tiresome: Trains may pound paradise into honeymoons And politics,…

CHARLES and XENIA are discussing them At her place. Interrupted solitaire, Fern, teapot, humdrum harmonies from where Blinks a green cat’s-eye, the old FM. XENIA: Now no. But when I am child my parents Are receiving them. Emigrés I think very old, Distinguished. Spectacles with rims of gold. Clothes stained by acid of expérience. Forever…

Who shares your room, I wish I knew. A centipede, with eyes of blue? She will not see me snooping here To count each slipper, boot and shoe. Our little dresser must think it queer To hold her panties pink and sheer. I’ll bet her ass will never quake The coldest evenings of the year….

Las puertas del año se abren, como las del lenguaje, hacia lo desconocido. Anoche me dijiste:      mañana habrá que trazar unos signos, dibujar un paisaje, tejer una trama sobre la doble página del papel y del día. Mañana habrá que inventar, de nuevo, la realidad de este mundo. Ya tarde abrí los ojos. Por el…

Inside a tin can atop my stove with long necks and empty stares but with so much character ingrained: my wooden spoons. Honest stirrers of soup no one remembers buying you and yet you are here so effortlessly shaped I imagine wood thrown to the sea floating back—perfect— after many years. Inside the bright tin…

When I wake up, it’s noon and the game is already over. The dusky city is full of people out of their minds with disappointment, fat people eating cigars, thin people whose only remaining ambition is to gain weight, or die. Inside the stadium fans are still attacking the goal-posts like antibodies. Curious, I take…

Diamonds are forever so I gave you quartz which is #7 on the hardness scale and it’s hard enough to get to know anybody these days if only to scratch the surface and quartz will scratch six other mineral surfaces: it will scratch glass it will scratch gold it will even scratch your eyes out…

Among polite giraffes swaying their long necks innocent of their loveliness, among cavalier hippoes who yawn through the afternoon, among properly misbehaved monkeys flying from tree to tree, among the dogs and cats of this neighborhood perfectly at ease secure in their niches, I stumble: the half step in the great chain. If I seem…