Poetry

  • The Vault

    Bit by bit I’ll go on surviving. Love like the sheets tumbled soft. Miles of snow outside Lisbon. Before turning the camera to the window, Soon, I’ll let you go. They say that love continues. That the ghosts or angels will usher us home. February again, & the table begs for fruit. And what do…

  • At the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

    Georgia, forgive me. For years I’ve carried this grief like a hoop of bone, framing everything I see: fragments of water, fragments of earth. No visible wound, no body  to bury, no song for safe passage to whatever the next world brings. I must be the only person here not asking, Where are the flowers? Fuck the flowers, those…

  • Cultural Revolution

    Humpbacks in journey rendered,          in Eastern Australian watersan Indian Ocean air. How pleading           tones jump across continents intorivers of sound scientists call non-          human revolution, perplexes. Perhaps a singer lost course and migrated          east from Antarctic feeding grounds.Did whitecaps trick or force; before           he forged a life worth its music? Hisvoice haunts night-oceans in silver;          intones his own dialect…

  • Ars Poetica

    In my Fresno, there are no prerequisites,just a frontage road inside the fence floppedto the west. The cover charge for a poetic identityis delegitimized alongside white aesthetics—between the rows welting the earth’s still dustlike corduroy.                                                   On one side, almond trees, pistachios.Fieldworker housing spray-painted with ads.The fervent recall of history from poets in the traditionhover in…

  • Hover

    1. A splinter driftsthrough a soot-slathered sun ray,its light: blue in orange orthat orange glowing. Beside the fence’s sunlit face,wrapped in a calico quilt,my head tilts and I seepressed into tire treada snow-nibbled leaf. Nine years afloat,the sky, dressed as water,neighs at headlightsthrummed awakewhen Coyote’s teethjewels the mesa’s rim. 2. I turn to my left…

  • The Gift

    You can tell whether a bird has a mateif there are pinfeathers on its head, new feathersthat start out as stubs full of blood then enshroudthemselves in a white scaly coat as they grow.Preening releases the feather, but a bird can’t reachthe top of its own head. A mate, a friend, or childpreens that spot,…

  • Hello

    I, a deaf man, thankhearing aidsfor not working,How many insults I did not hear! in full mystery ofpersonhood Itoe, naked,                    talking to you, God, since I am afraid to find myself alone. I now have 24 hours 00 secondsbeforetwo menshove my cooling body into an ambulance van —I know a death that can be explained is…