Poetry

  • There Are So Many Fatherless Children Around

    “I never could stand you too long,                              don’t you know,”      a definite blockage                        concrete application. The Graces are three Negro                        bims walking down Columbus Ave.      or a woman’s laughter from                        Shaker Heights or Santa Barbara.      He never could forgive himself,            …

  • Another Night in Rue Morgue

    “I’m so tired of empty promises I could just blow up,” she said on First Avenue where you knew it was spring because the sirens sound light-hearted, and Holly was drinking her Campari with soda. Personally, I had a Bullshot, and drank it like a man personally on his way to the gas chamber. But…

  • Taking Chances

    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…

  • Sunset and Noon: Marjory P.

    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…

  • Isopet

    A burly country bumpkin, Bald as an autumn pumpkin, Sat – in his cups – at home. Some kind of fly, a-winging, Time and again kept stinging His unprotected dome. Each time the pest would land, The peasant smashed his hand Smartly against his head. Just as the bug would bite him, He tried in…

  • Baxter’s Wharf, Hyannis

    The blue breeze spins In near-still swirls Away from land. A gull lifts off The dull brown pier, Then works its wings And scales itself In sidelong glide Downwind, down wind Alone, black-tipped Wings its way up Through a soft scale Like a mild dream Balanced on sleep. Then, blood-beak poised On molecules Of sea…

  • Involving a Risk

    Nights flex. You occur to me like morning’s sketchy moon: a surprising intimate. I lapse into you delirious as a drive into rain. Something you say is your hand, opening, inside me. You have to sleep alone to dream. . . Who can remember, counting backwards, the logic of snow. Leaves shake their fists, the…