Poetry

  • Who’s on First?

    “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…

  • Feebleness of Hands

         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…

  • Sambas

    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…

  • A Death Warrant

    508. And behold! There were blossoms in the wind, and there were blossoms in the moving letters of the death warrant, and the wind moved them not, for behold the wind was stayed in its course, and there were flocks in the river, crossing the river, and the river moved against them, and behold no…

  • Case History; A Sestina

    I feel that I should introduce myself. I am X, a not very unusual person, A rather ordinary specimen of human life. At the moment I feel that I serve no purpose, Which is why I am here—I want to feel useful. Also, I find mental hospitals interesting. And I do hope you will find…

  • Closer to Your World

         Tom and Nancy were walking along the esplanade.      ”You see that guy walking ahead of us, with the shorts on? The one with so much hair on his legs. You know, I’d been looking at that guy for at least five minutes before I realized that he was also wearing a pair of black nylon…

  • The Hypochondriac

    A lump in your groin. A burning in your discharge. You cannot quit the cigarettes or the entire nights spent refining the pointless game of billiards. Setting the smoke of drugs adrift on the afternoon light, you salvage up a time perhaps when spring made a car look great and mascaraed girls from the lunchroom…