Poetry

Dear Mother dear, Now this here’s an Edda, which in Icelandic means “greatgrandmother.” Snorri’s Skáldskaparmál: well, Aristotle’s Poetix it ain’t, not by a googolplex of parsecs, no ma’am; nor is the Gylfaginning any Iliad or Exodus. But our nothern temper (born of winter nights on the iced bridge, bred and borne on the vast namelessness…

Lovers passed us like movie stars. I am trembling but the terror of what I want to do is what beckons me to commit the crime. And every poster in town reveals my craven design. I look for you. There is only vertigo and bile in my throat. Fear: to crawl like a baby lost…

During my father’s walk, he went underground to pin down rails, pushed his back against cement walls when trains slammed by. The day’s hammering done, he headed for the circle of gray light. His father first went down into the tunnels and in his dotage bragged of breaking the 1911 strike by staring the men…

Table manners are so emotional: These knives reflect the teeth they imitate, Returning us to an uncultured state. The duke across from me is very tall, But not so tall as Dottie (my blind date).      Table manners are so emotional      These knives reflect the teeth they imitate. The seamstress next to me is very small…

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,…