Poetry

For John Ashbery, in thanks We are long-lived, with bodiesthat tend to outlast the mind.But not you, Tootsie Roll.You had a holster of highlightersin a million shades, and you’d use themto mark arrangements of bluespruce in a cartoonishly repeating landscape.Fossil teeth, or a dark motif not unlikethe clean surface of a lakestanding up for the…

I might have guessed,running the streets that night, running each rightdown the middle, not meeting a car, rain soakingand so soft, my arms held out for the lastcorner to the house, that the dark figureon the porch swing would be my mother, the night and stormand night’s storm like a sentence she could no longer…

things might have been otherwise. Everyone remembersthat time she walked in with flowerssewn onto the hem of her dress, charming to allbut the flowers, and the fingers of outside lightnow lacking those flowers to act upon, and the passerby beereturning to find nothing there, and the drinking rootdone drinking. Everyone knows a backward step may…

You took my hand and took me to the train.The sky inhaled above us as we ran.The weather was suspended like a crane.The woman’s hand was taken by the man.The train was in suspension on its tracks.The woman took her ticket from her pocket.You left me at the train and then went back.The weather was…

Our matriarch says we’re not a cemetery-visiting family, but she knows who is:the next of kin who sent the telephonefashioned entirely of flowers with the banner Jesus Called, Debbie Answered. Tonight, no wake,no funeral procession. Instead, we crack glowbracelets on the beach. Float seaweed bouquetsknotted with washed-up bits of fishing line. We hold open a…

In the garden, the cat barfed up two wingsfrom some bird he couldn’t swallow. Nothingis concealed that will not be revealed. When you put it like that, it’s almost beautiful.Like, suddenly it all makes sense. Stickerson car windows keep reminding me that Idahois shaped like a gun, just add a trigger anda pine tree bullet….

May you never bear fruit again. The disciplesheard Him say it. I’ve been hungry too, toldthe car door to fuck off when I bumped my head.Kicked the dog, and shoved my son into his room.Woe unto. Poor tree. Whose fault, its fruit is bornbefore its leaves. Then He overturnedthe money tables, knocked down the dovesinside…

By 1970, 33 states had bannedshoe-store x-ray machines. Mr. Levitz sits on a stoolmeasuring feet with a steelslide that feels cool when itnudges the tip of my toe.Future and past mean lessthan the ash on his cigarette,which will fall on the floor,because the plate in hishead makes him forgetwhat happened beforethe war. But these shoeswill…

Perhaps with a desk between,some chaste space, the recruiter leaningforward, warm bodies on the other side. Of the teenagers presentone will lie about her age,one will eat bananas to make weight, one pull herself from small-town quicksand.Lace the hands behind the head,look good in a uniform, look nonchalant. Army doesn’t take everyone,maybe you, maybe not,…