Poetry

This animal will not move a greater weight than it is used to—taken too far it does the same; stops, and so the merchants are obliged to lodge there. I     Shelley, Goya, Van der Weyden The Bug River ice scratched by Austrians with lead in their feet, and the hot fomentations of the Cuyahoga lit by…

1. If I had to guess, I’d say some other house, and some street less atterial. Nothing’s at my back and east seems arbitrary as coin. Dawn might come anywhere in this flat land bewildering as elms and horses, Twenty-nine years after his class and thirteen after his death I’m here to pick up the…

You sent the letter to an old address and now I receive it, three days after the news of your death. You’re already in the ground. I hold the letter to the window as if mere light could dissolve the paper seal. I think of miracles: how one evening I turned my wineglass and flashed…

Now that mills control the snarlers, the backbiter winds who can guess where the waters have gone? Only we know—they pestled this Yankee’s thoughts to a gold-nugget juggernaut reel, footwork ground down to decimals smaller than thought: his profit shoved up the high-water mark on our masthead. At 40 he balances his millstone on a…

     Smash! All of us looked up from our roast lamb and new potatoes. Grandmother had dropped a plate. Or rather, as those of us who hadn’t been poking about in the watery creamed spinach had noticed, she had hurled her plate to the floor. Or rather, as a moment’s reflection taught us, she had in…

Children, she said, you are my children. What I mean to say is I’m going off in the woods to be alone. I want you to understand I’ve got to get away to think and touch my body with my own hands when I’m alone with no threats. You are my children and I was…

My vigils are unnecessary: you seldom stir. I am lucky to have such a child. Asleep, your breath is moist and carefully I undress you. Your flesh is precious, my only wealth. I caress you with the awe of a disciple. Your nakedness shines in the dark. Son— I am afraid of you. Growing bigger…

My mother, whom I know only from the outside, gave birth to four of us. I see my three sisters from the outside, but I cannot see myself from the outside, though I am of the four. Why is that? To stand alone in my dark store staring through my fenestras is to be singular…

A car in Seattle stops at a red light. A boy in Phoenix throws a rock through a window. A ball player kneels in the on deck circle. Any number of farmers aren’t milking cows. Somewhere a family of six is stuffed into a camper. A wave hitting any beach is followed by another. A…