Poetry

My first substituted coughing for breathing. It had no nose no eyes just a smooth feverish body: incurable tenderness. My second did have a nose brown eyes and soft full gums. She looked like my uncle the one I’d only seen pictures of — the one I knew I’d have loved the best. This baby…

1. Always I feel it bloating like a tumor a weight, a shape brushing my thighs as I wade into sleep. The water is warm like my blood flat as a kitchen table my face dances there in sun circles the water is a caress. Then a fin breaks the surface coming fast. 2. You…

The Holston lolls like a tongue here, its banks Gummy and ill at ease; across the state line, Moccasin Gap declines in a leafy sneer. Darkness, the old voyeur, moistens his chapped lips. Unnoticed by you, of course, your mind Elsewhere and groping: the stuck clasp, her knees, The circle around the moon, O anything….

Sometimes I have to think big, bigger than an airplane hanger, bigger than Lake Erie, bigger than nitroglycerin. When I think that big, I stand in a field and look down for a long time, my crackerbox boots are clumsy continents, I ignore them and look instead at a stone. It is cold, grey and…

I The morning train arrives at two. Be there. I’ll be carrying a briefcase, wearing heavy face lotion. If you get there before I do I’ll be in the second coach, compartment 5. I’ll be sitting in seat 3 facing a fat man. He’s following me. After the briefcase. Discretion. If I don’t descend the…

( – The Horse Latitudes are a region of unusual calm, lying in the North Atlantic Ocean. When sailing ships were becalmed there, the crew used to throw overboard cargo and horses. Thus lightened, the boat could take advantage of whatever wind there might be.) What does the sea want, my clothes, my keys, my…

for Martha A young woman rows to the middle of the river, and plays the violin her father gave her just before he died. She keeps time with her foot, making a wonderful noise on the bottom of the boat, like tapping on a rainbarrel, or a whale’s heartbeat. She plays until almost night. As…

(1) A lot of sky litters my view of home — oh Missed one, lost      Helium balloons spill off the horizon            & knock me backwards Jeolousy is too easy, this easy I miss      a better sentiment, ballooning pride could accomplish      Homesick for your hands, I miss the fragrance of my labors in them: devilish…

A baby, transparent blue, crawls up my shoulder, claws digging into me. I gave birth to it. And now I have to take the baby home and show the father. He won’t like it when he sees the film on his son’s eyes, when he sees this blue furless cat as his only inheritor.