Poetry

This is the kind of night on which Yuan Chen cried out to his dead wife: when one dreams of another, are both aware of it? the moonlight blackening his bed, the ice roaring in the great northern rivers of Honan. From such a night, to such discoverable likeness, Adam himself awoke, knowing none of…

How deep is frost?      I dig six inches deeper. That is deep enough. Why do you live in this fenced-in garden?      I am the lord of the garden, the retainer of the gardener      who makes his plans and mends his fences. What can’t      get out is his business. Have you no friends?      I emulate my…

1 You need the woman wearing blue to remind you of the future. Her body has the shape of it. You need the movement of a wrist turning in its sleeve capable unlocking air. The bone, the tool turning under the skin unlocking the skin. The bone, a mineral of light unlocking and you remember…

What sings the holy language of meaningless music? Maybe some kind of a bird, I think. What knits the invisible patterns that fasten the sky? I think maybe some kind of bird. What circles above the dying? I think a bird of some kind. What darkens everything in the shadow of a wing? Some kind…

1. Ulysses to Calypso I think I’m looking for Ithaca, not myself. My heart, brain, ivory bones below the surface might be pearls to serious girlfriends, but I consider myself an onion, not an oyster. You might get wise by staring at your face in the water, listening to Sirens, asking the dead in hell…

You make yourself new again. Along your sides, only a thin line marks the scar where you lay open one whole summer. Steam rises from your body in this heat. You move slowly you sit up to your chin in yourself. One morning you are a blue floor. You are rising, you are learning to…

In Ohio I ran into a red barn floating. I taped it. I put it back. It kept swinging open. It kept falling apart. In New York I wove concrete into my gaggle of veins. I stopped the flute of my ears with thick bungs. In New Hampshire winds entered my ear. I became a…

Phipp’s wife, Bettina Feather Phipps, was convalescent on a blue-striped chaise from the impositions of her daily life: “And cook, who should be legally barred from cooking for others, preparing my lunch of native asparagus on triangles of toast— the slight relief in my semi-invalid’s regime— curdled the bechamel and burnt the toast, and served…

Put it this way, lovey, some people stab themselves with their own strength: stubbornly clinging, when all the best of collective wisdom, not just your parents, but your friends, too—calls up the feral outline of a lover that love for yourself should let you let go. Thinking about it, I had it all so clear…