Poetry

for C.P. What to do with all this flame but douse itwith paper cupfuls of red and yellow pills.What to do with the sun that licks its rose blazein the tiled corners of this ward, with the hours,with the burden of relief we’re allowed to feel.We still breathe. We still walk the hallsin our spoiled…

He said he would hang himselfso as not to make a mess. But he was still there the next day.And the next. And the next. He wrote the note for the copson a page he tore from my favorite book of poems. That’s all I saw of it—in absence—the ripped-out page like a jagged fin…

I don’t remember wearing itto school or after dark to the Halloween partywhere apples for bobbing floated in tubs.I don’t remember staring in the mirror to admiremyself in the half- mask, white blouse and blackskirt, the fabled red hood gaudy with sequins.My father paid for my first store-bought costume. Whochose? Why her? There are no…

Three days after my chemo infusion,the hospital Chapel’s framed inspirational wordswishing us well in moving forward,I send myself flying with frozen lips and bad ski equipment,arms and legs draggingagainst the winter’s cold molecules—no longer regretting the frilly white gift saved from the affair in Vaduzthat I wore during confessionunder my street-length blackskirt, feeling its lusty…

“So she thoroughly taught him that one cannot take pleasure without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every glance, every last bit of the body has its secret, which brings happiness to the person who knows how to wake it. She taught him that after a celebration of love the lovers…

In this poem someone has taken the edgeof one hand & swept the crumbsfrom the counter.In this poem we savewhat falls & Jesus speaks lightly,a breeze carrying the river’s scent.And all the day & night of this poema face asks what’s leftafter science, after the black & whitemovies, the forties camel hair coat, the nothing…

Write a poem about the sounds the ice makesend of winter, my father says. I could say grinds like slow gears.I could say moans and grieves, crackslike a gun in the night but holds,and I would not be wrong. There’s a remedy for winter called the tilting of the earth.It is not a sign of…

We hiked back to those desert rocks just after Christmas. We saw the whale head rising from the sea, and the parrot’s odd unstaring eye. We saw a thousand plump barrel cactuses, and a single antelope squirrel, and a half-dozen lizards running ahead of us on the path. We saw one yellow flower and saw…

After Marilyn When I let the river answer I hearthe birds, waxwing, junco… The gardener snips, pilgrims speak softly,the creek rambles. River, tell me how to rest— why moments short as a headturnbecome torrents of sludge. When the river answers it asks:“Have you come with memories, regrets, seasons, sorrows, all that you love,do you still…