Poetry

Arms around me, tongue in my mouth he was just a cliche I couldn’t listen to again. Beard, a tired rose in his buttonhole, a tweed jacket & a few jokes at the door. Watching his sex come up was as distant a thing as viewing oil rigs on TV at work in the North…

All your life you have been standing on the edge of a cliff. Below the cliff, a river. Snow the other side. You kneel holding a harvest of roots. You remove your artificial eye. You erase darkness. Light. For the first time you see your feet have turned to stone. You have become part of…

In the pinch of time, facing an upright piano under its paisley throw you sport a jet and agate necklace around your freckled throat. You were mad for costume jewelry — and better if it was red, and soon you ran off to marry Handsome Jack. I strain my ears after your songs, you had…

When the moon rose she rose, an effigy hung by her yellow hair, a long-necked bird trumpeting doom. Old Hag! We tossed her to the dogs and still she would not die. She mapped our lives. Slit Eyes! How she could stare. And far in the distance of our sleep something wanted to strangle itself….

I had been in love with you three years before. . . Driving from Maine to more Maine friendly — chatty we were both relieved to get as far away                 as possible from your neighbors who had                 spoiled our dinner with all sorts of                 insinuating and unstated                 demands that we resolve…

come in light variable and with calm good weather most of the time on the floor of my house silence a round a pond the bush a hush hilldog Bark and horseprint calm cold like a crescent moon a hunter rode alone through snow possessed of supernatural powers composed of rags and tatters Forest closed…

you will go home it will be cold you will warm some- one your sister your cousin a girl you meet in a park in a bar her elbows red with waiting you will clap your mittens on her ears you will sing songs from the frozen territory you will stir her slowly and the…

On the balcony of the tower I play my flute and watch The Spring rain. I wonder If I ever Will go home and see The tide bore In Chekiang River again. Straw sandals, an old Begging bowl, nobody Knows me. On how many Bridges have I trampled The fallen cherry blossoms?      — Su Man…

Suddenly there she was between us on the bed, the one third party and broken off relation I would least like to see share in our menage. Tight-lipped and glaring, she waits for me to do the introducing, own up to an old association, and with hanging head advise you not to be surprised by…