Poetry

Chicory and queen anne’s lace line the way And orange day lilies, spread From the yard of some long vanished cabin. The statue of a button-eyed brown rabbit (When I am almost on him) Comes to life And leaps, excited and light-hearted, Into the brush. The lane is walled With dogwood of course and judas…

     You’re over seven feet tall and weigh close to three hundred pounds, but you’re so well proportioned that nobody ever realizes just how big you are until he sees you standing next to another human being. Your manner with other people is gentle and considerate.      One afternoon while you’re sitting in a bar with friends,…

It wasn’t my grandfather’s. He lectured at Tremont Hall On a snowy night. As a starter—just to break the ice—he cracked: “I’m glad the both of you could come.” There wasn’t even scattered laughter In the half empty house. After his peroration And after he had swept off back stage His Prince Albert skirts Breezing…

     Several miles in the distance clouds of dust rose hundreds of feet in the air, marking the passage of the more than two hundred thousand pilgrims who were making their way deep into the phosphate-rich Spanish Sahara.      Frankie pulled her white illustrated T-shirt over her head and bared her firm young breasts to the onslaught…

“You can be so inconsiderate.”                        ”You are too sensitive.” “Then why don’t you take my feelings into consideration?”                              ”If you weren’t so sensitive it wouldn’t matter.” *     *      * “You seem to really care about me only when you want me to do something for you.”            ”You do…

     The past has left its mark on you.      One Saturday afternoon you and a number of other people went for a ride on Lake Erie in a friend’s new boat. It was cold and overcast and the boat began to fall to pieces several miles from shore. The builder had obviously not put it together…

The Bronze Statue                 (Léon-Paul Fargue) The frog on the tumbler-game in the park Gets bored at night, when it all gets dark. She thinks a statue’s life is absurd, Always about to pronounce a great word,                 The Word . . . She would rather be—as she’d often hope— Blowing bubbles of music with…

     It’s unlikely that the caravan is going to get to you at all. You’re sitting under a date palm with Jean Genet. “When slaves make love,” he says, “they’re really doing something else.”      ”What?” you’re about to ask him, when the words of Vauvenargues come to you. `It is equally a sign of weakness to…

In Rio de Janeiro, dozens of new sambas are composed for each year’s Carnival. Although sambas concerning love outnumber all others, there are always some about world events, such as landing on the moon, and Brazilian politics and life in general. This sampling from 1965, a year after the “rightest” revolution, comments on, or pokes…