Poetry

The meander of my walking, and through it A sun that swings to go with me at each turn, And sweet fatigue that remains childlike because      It works at nothing. Push aggressively enough at the stout weave Of what is, appearances we must take as Being what they seem, and you start to tear through,…

It was gray; the air was just cool; the sky hung above me like the inside of a skull. It was easy to walk down that street. Before I thought, I had entered the brain of all the strangers but it had relaxed, it was not like noon with differences glaring in the sun. I…

For me it might be fine to wake up and weed the garden play tennis or lift a chair over my head but what about the man who moves pianos for a living or the woman who at last gives birth to one too many children what does she think of breakfast brought to her…

Having walked out in the storm and seen no end to it and nowhere to get to you watch the snow cover the ground cover itself cover everything that is not you it is a blinding fall from moment into moment the air sweeping away the air the cold turning your breath to stone no…

     A Letter to 102 Boulevard Haussmann Mon cher maître, could even you have mastered such dissemblance?            Given your gift for luring the accidental and the inevitable to lie down together, what would you have done with these disparities—could you have parsed them into a semblance of sense?                  Mind, that phoenix, Kindles its…

Time “at a premium as usual” and me drunk in the garden the birds bearing their perfected frames down the creekbed walking as straight as I can I only intersect myself Even the gardeners are drunk today their rakes fly out of their hands they hide their bottle in the hedge their pile of petals…

1. Our Inhaler At first I was suspicious, when in the heat of our getting into each other you would call for “Amy.” I wondered who it was you wanted, me or her. But when you kept coming back for both of us, I realized that losing you to her was also a way of…

I saw you on my way from shoes to sweaters coming down the other escalator in the gray suit we had bought together in Venice. It had been years, but its cut was still stylish; and your hair shone with the same ebony luster it had that summer. You didn’t see me, though I waved,…

     —for Ricardo Sternberg Shaped like a bureaucratic grin It floats Unseen Past the general’s head As he sits Studying an old newsreel of Peron’s exile. Even the palace guard Daydreaming About the young girl in the marketplace Thinks it only A phallics spectre Thrown up in the mind’s eye Like The curvaceous angel The boxer…