Poetry

Recipe For Painting Gates (18th century) Six pounds: melted pitch. Half a mutchkin: linseed oil. One pound: brick dust. Mix well together. Use it warm.

No matter what’s the photograph, you’re the man in the center always making sense. Look through the family album, grandma’s first beau, the nice guy who, vaguely, disappeared. Dad in the leather flier’s jacket, a plane called ANZIO BELLE. In the background’s the waist gunner they chipped out of a pile of shells & frozen…

Steel arms tired of empty reaching, settle into a bed older than the urge to get across. No one pays attention. Losses are usual, the elements tempered to subtraction. Only giant beams know their own sinking for a tragic sun, eye burning horizons that cover them. Experts may detect a shrinking. Rails rode earlier to…

You are a name I have taken at random from the phone directory. Soon we are exchanging recipes for bread. You confess none of your boy friends chat as well as I do. Your life history is fascinating. I continue to torment you. You tell me this doesn’t matter. Since we’ve started talking you’ve gotten…

(inspired from a 16th century Mughal school painting found in Maurice Dimand’s, Indian Miniatures.) It is the year 1575. Dastan i-Amir Hamza rules India. Persian & Hindu elements appear side by side. One fat assed bird catcher walks east of the painting With no bird or cage. A goatherd and his mistress watch their goats…

The word was somber. What it might have meant, its origin and weight, uncertain under shade as the dark face below the ratified sombrero. Eyes it gave the lie to overshadowed where sun wheels higher than missing trees. The hoopoo’s lim downcurving bill complements the Old World crest, flamboyant color in the unitary sun. Signs…

I You lie in the arms of the snow falling outside the window. You looked out a long time, then lay down. I ask if you are cold. You are. Your body gives off the only light, the bones reflecting the bare bulb in the room of your life whose door is locked. *     *      *…

Praise to thee great Allah, For carving my beloved Pure as the sand of Mecca, Rarer than the rose rarest. But Allah, Why you make her princess Beyond reach of servant Rasheed? The suitors are at the palace gate Hankering after my love-bird. Her father the Khaleef Hath proclaimed- Let eet bee Who touches the…

No water drops over the lashed edge to ease the dry socket. The pale-veined year dies slower than a nerve, will not congeal. Each morning its lid thickens a hairbreadth, locks go limp as house plants, the tenants disappear indoors. Through film curtains they watch the ice cap creep down where a thin creek turns…