Poetry

When we were friends my words were colocynth seeds. Our lips were smothered with flies. — Translated by N. Aruri and Carl Senna

     for ms The shadows move on the wall. Rabbits and plums fill the space and the space fills her. It is too easy, he said, you must become the space. Take it inside you, the bootblack sky at night, the bony ocean rising at morning until there is nothing else. I will open the door,…

The moon beat like an oyster at his head as he rode, his mare’s flanks hung with seaweed, with sea-green veins, flighting the quicksilver tide for Tintagel. An iron wind sang through his visor, thin grid of vision, of Isolde, of the steel mesh and winch of passion, of Mark with the calculating look of…

My two great-uncles got sent to the state pen at Walla Walla and broke out. Lyle can write, Rex is an addict. They both know how shouts come from the part that’s not ready. They’re laying low in some woods in Oregon, some cabin whose floor must be climbing the walls. In Bremerton, Washington, where…

My mother babbles. A salad of noises: “You know who this is?” asks my aunt and I dread some horror of an answer, but no, nothing. She rubs her tray instead. “It’s clean,” says my aunt, “the tray is clean. Evelyn, what are you cleaning? Play with your cards, play pishy-posh,” and then she laughts,…

It is summer and the birds maintain their silence. There is the smell of raspberries that proves to be my birthday, and the gathering of certain dust which I find encouraging, and Jesus Loves Me again and again on a vague piano. This I know. I pass myself the salt.

1. Celastrus scandens is the innocent, woody vine whose clusters of orange fruit open to expose bright red seeds. Scandens means climbing, or examine, see, spectacle, and scene. The Greek root meant stumble, then snare, hence scandal and scansion too. So, sparklings or star-seeds strung out on a hard, twisted line, tumbling, stumbling, and scandalized….

The Feast of St John, Corpus Christi Sunday, Houses breathing warmly out like stacks of hay, Windows wide, the white and yellow Papal flags Now drooped: one side of the street nods at the cool Shadow opposite sloping towards the canal’s Green weed that reflects nothing. Turn a corner, Nettles lap at a high hoarding,…

The air was soft, the ground still cold. In the dull pasture where I strolled Was something I could not believe. Dead grass appeared to slide and heave, Though still too frozen-flat to stir, And rocks to twitch, and all to blur. What was this rippling of the land? Was matter getting out of hand…