Poetry

     And so was I, the camera, instructed to pan the island’s landscape, to zoom toward its capitol city. My body snapped, reclattered and shuttered to the rapid rhythm of spent flash bulbs which left purple wisps of (MGM Exploits Standard Fruit) glassy smoke across the skies of the Northern Province. Typhoid babies sucked death while…

My hand falling As if to reach under it. My black thumb, black tongue, Tasting the tear of the moth wing.      The milk skim of my eye torn,      The thorned leg of the locust      Probing the pin of oil,      My last seeing. Knees unbending Like the last wave of ocean, Sheet of sky settling.      A…

learn to cut            hit            fade learn to look out learn to run carefully try to see in the night & scream silently they don’t care      who you are learn to need it now learn to hate learn to hate learn to love your hate

It is unmanly to be gorging a hot fudge sundae, nuts and whipped cream in the afternoon. There are only women here with their shopping. Worse than sleeping late getting up after your wife has left for work. Yesterday I recognized myself coming out of a double feature into the sunlight.

oh! lucky girl! when you go home all the little boys will want to pull your pants off see your new U.S. steel legs shine

My uncle had a birthmark a liver colored flame on his face. Who knows where that came from. I remember one photograph from 40’s Hollywood, my uncle Leo Carillo and a woman who was not my aunt for long and who was not the English Duchess my uncle could have married during the war. The…

(for Jane) “I fly to my dreams from my bed at night” sauntered Jane/ through a conversation.      I the wind,      the scarf of a trailing sky      swoop on the figure appearing      as a calander wearing its months      back to front, while the weeks dropped out      with the days listening to the song      that the birds…

Just as I was about to call your name The phone rang And since I was alone I knew it must At last be you I thought: the times are trying to change us Into trees in the valley of the shadow of joy But all the blessings which flow from memories of you Seem…

Random frames from the flow of time Are dealt like hands of solitaire Or perhaps a fortune being told. An unknown woman in Victorian dress Is sitting, back-turned by a lake, Blond hair across her shoulder; A cat drinks water from a tap. The smiling faces of strangers and friends Arrange themselves in no strict…