Poetry

I know—why did I wait until now, the last moment, almost the moment after the last moment, to sing to you, outermost, tender, heart. Respect held me back, and shyness. Before I first saw you, I had not seen even a picture of you, and you were fearsome—when it would come down to it, between…

           After Ernie Barnes, Sugar Shack, circa 1971 Here, says a card shark spreading a map, are the rest of your days laid out. Of course, the lines are faded. The valleys, now, overgrown with havoc and industry, the seven unnamable roads rubbed to faint music in the back of an…

plank by plank a footbridge begins in thought where over gaps ideas will walk their way toward order. Light blue paint between the wings of gray moths weighted down by dew on a morning wall and grounded by a lust for a night light: it looks pretty, all this intractable trouble. We want the facts…

Even after I add up all your birthdays I’ve celebrated but that haven’t come to pass since that day long ago when we agreed it would be better if you never drew that first breath of air, you’re still only zero, as all the unborn are, though you never look like a zero, which resembles…

Who rhymes Knives with sight? Watches horror late at night? Across the way He phones and orders wine. As diners dine The knife cuts back To a skirt. A hand there never hurt. The bark hello: Is it me who first goes blank? Cannot greet or thank Him at my ear? Silent goes the phone….

Red tinsel wrapped around a roadside cross glints in the sun like a cop’s strobe bar, then recedes into the drive’s unbroken trance. Power lines X-Acto-knife the sky. Pasted and scraped, a billboard’s pastel palimpsest, photographed in raking light. Our eyes locked on the road, stories unpeel in the rental car’s souped-up and streamlined confession…

for Kwame Dawes The youngest won’t fall asleep though he keeps resting his head on the table next to his empty plate. These are the jewels of his half-open eyes bewitched by the pale blossoming spines of the centerpiece flowers no one remembers the names of— these are the sparks flying up from the fire…

Of the stiff-backed prime minister the people said That he had swallowed his umbrella. They trusted him Not with their lives, their daughters, or their pension plans, But with something intangible: his bloodshot eyes Glimpsed in their collective souls a yearning to undo The code by which they lived—the code he would rewrite In a…

               I answer the phone. After the usual delay, no telemarketing hum but a male-voiced “Gotcha, gotcha a little bit.” His tone is practiced. It boasts he’s finalized everything that needed saying. Here in me to be jeered at is the thing we’ve all got coming that may not…