Poetry

34

I knew better than to light light after light. I knew—I can’t recall to see candles out and could put the house down in burning—. What if someone asked me, then, do you want to receive its ashes? I’d say yes, that’s the right thing…(but deep down I’d say no, no ashes.). To imagine the…

Parable: Jackrabbit Belly

Yesterday, jackrabbit belly was not a color. Today I hold a paint strip to the wall, and it’s true: this is the exact shade of a rabbit’s soft fur, of the sepia robe of St. Francis, whose followers swirled like birds, or were birds, St. Francis being one willing to trade like for like. An…

Surfacing

Two women are walking on the ocean floor I’m the one in front, holding an oxygen mask then passing it back to my mother We take turns She breathes I breathe She breathes I breathe We can’t talk we just keep walking and breathing and sometime towards morning I notice she’s gone A bit of…

Ways to Harm a Thing

Throw scissors at it.
 Fill it with straw
 and set it on fire, or set it
 off for the colonies with only
 some books and dinner-
 plates and a stuffed bear
 named Friend Bear for me
 to lose in New Jersey.
 Did I say me? Things
 have been getting
 less and less hypothetical
 since I…

Yeki Bood Yeki Nabood

every day someone finds what they need in someone else you tear into a body and come out with a fistful of the exact feathers you were looking for wondering why anyone would want to swallow so many perfect feathers everyone looks uglier naked or at least I do my pillar of fuzz my damp…

Waiting for Achilles

I am afraid & so I run. If I wave a white flag, he’ll kill me, If I fight, I’ll die, I run Falling inside every stride. Where is the hero? Where Is my swift horse? Achilles is a tiger, a tank, a raging fire, Every fear I ever had In one. I run. The…

The Old Masters

Sometime late late last night, after polishing off Two bottles of Millésime 2004 to mark our 25 wedding anniversary And consequently finding ourselves dazed in bed Face to face eyelids drooping with both reading lamps blazing, Almost but not quite unconscious yet, I wanted to exclaim as I once did Something seriously corny, like You…