Poetry

There was nothing left to consume except epsom salt and water and, as the box of epsom salt was labeled USE EXTERNALLY, we knew that we were taking a chance. But, we mixed the salt with the water and sipped it down. Immediately there were vomitings, followed by some deaths. However, the act was not…

Each face strikes a different hour in the heart Days last tolling will be your’s (Its profile’s panels on which are sleep-lacquered eyes The golden flights and returns of an unblemished wound) Like a blind person reading smoke signals, I touch The face foretold as your’s (It’s like a boney honey in the sunset, pale…

1. He is kept circling airport after airport, while his woman goes through the atlas, alphabetically. 2. They were married in the fall. 3. He loves her and gives her a ticket to prove it. 4. They are beautiful as a football team. 5. This is not a roman-a-clef. 6. Lake Michigan never makes a…

As much as someone could plow in one day They called an acre As much as a person could die in one instant A lifetime — scoot over a little, The greatbig instruments, click up to measure Stress in constellations and in navels everywhere — tremor- Lorn sharp antennaed as lovers’ hissing lips That can…

I don’t like watching the news. Today’s thefts have nothing to do with yesterday’s; there is no brotherhood of victims, no handshake of loss. It is as unexpected as love, and as private, indifferent as California to Iowa’s harvest queen. But the weather, earth’s continuing serial, binds us all with questions asked in every language:…

I walk On human stilts. To my right lower leg a man is locked rigid To my left a woman, lifelessly strapped I have to heave them up, Heft them out but they’re so heavy Seems all my strength Just to take the begin step All my past to broach a future. And so on…

for Leonidas Zenakos Mama Crow makes her nest with feathers and twigs Mama crow counts her eggs and finds some missing Mama Crow preens her neck Mama Crow bleeds her breast -her husband drags out a corpse crowing “Lunchtime, lunch!” At 5 she has her coffee at 7 meat-pie at 8 she builds prisons at…

Two girls knit sweaters for Ricky Nelson. He promises both of them to wear the sweaters on Monday. The whole time they are on camera Ricky does not kiss either of the girls. The blank look in his eyes makes you think that he rips their insides apart with ground glass at night. When Ricky…

For six days I’ve been re-heating soup. The bird in the soup never flew, never complained unless you would call the red flesh of his head a complaint. I ask my son where we come from. He says the wind. When he couldn’t fly he told me little people helped him pour darkness into holes….