Poetry

Look at me. Turn around. It’s four — thirty Saturday afternoon & this sick loose light that’s coming through the window wants to fall apart. It’s time for me to leave; & Christ, love, if I’ve got to go, this is the time. Pick up the books & help me divide the dishes, the glassware,…

I know nothing of the soil. I have never dug my hands into the earth or planted a seed. I was eighteen before I saw the Big Dipper. The flowers are like slide rules, alien instruments. No matter what I touch my hands are clean. Now, at night, when my wife and children are sleeping…

It is startling now how sexual the poems of 15, 16 were – not surprising, closet ached, but the almost classic images of bells and candles, apples hair and bridges came completely without calculation mixed with vague communistic slogans this obviousness of compulsive wildass lack crapola still carries the mysteries I must learn *     *      *…

Five women, talking while spring came: petals of the hand; the whispering of rain. One talked of loneliness; sudden alarm: four startled deer leapt into the distance. One measured the spirit the length of the night, a seismograph charting the rising of tremors. One of her husband thought always/his absence, her heart sheathed in grief,…

Tiresomely, in prose, long ago great-sonneting Berryman said that in Heart of Darkness the Congo stood for a private part, specifically a vagina, to Marlow. Now, I find that perverse, if I had to say. The continent was mysterious, the river led into its mystery, ok. But Marlow (and Conrad before him) could tell a…

Is lingering by the door With a younger sister Listening to my music. Oh come into my parlor Blush and promise to come again Should I say, “My need is great,” Or “My father married a girl much younger,” Or, “I saw you in the Moka having a milkshake.” Oh why should I, old enuf…

I love to watch the butcher wipe the sharp blade on his apron stained with fresh blood. I’m going to marry him      WHAM the side of beef split open he tenderly spreads it like a woman’s legs between smeared fingers stroking the cold smoothness from his fingertips            bloody red drops on the floor spotting…

The old man wasn’t thumbing but I picked him up. He wasn’t growing a beard, just didn’t shave and his sack, Army duffle and white, bulged with all he owned. He apologized three times for the space he was taking and he hated women. Story after story he told of waitresses who said no when…

1. The bottoms of her feet were tatooed Fear on Demand. 2. I’m sucking her magic stones from Puerto Escondido. 3. The islands on my wrists were dread. You have, she groaned, to persevere. 4. She found a homemade triangular scarf and laughed a map of blood deposits. 5. A drool chain dips along her…