Poetry

I was as true as the numbers it takesto make a fever, and even if Julywas a slow-burning ship, I could stillfind comfort in the scattered spectrumof wind chimes and sun catchers. But now the skyline lies in hangdogsilence. Winter is a heavy opal claspedaround my neck, and the city skulkssilver-haired and ornery, and oh—…

Like a salty sailor, my son cusses his way out of bed and into themorning. Stubbed toe and no hot water, Mother Teresa. Burnt bagel,Mother Teresa. What a devious bride of Christ, orchestrating my son’sfailures from the other side. She who blessed Calcutta lepers makeshim run a stop sign bang in front of a cop….

Seven, maybe eight years old, nude, and outOf nowhere there she wasStreaked from the waist down in glisteningPebbled green shit, shivering as she ate a tube of cherry lip GlossIn the Great Ape House at the Lincoln Park Zoo.My wife was the first to see her—Her hand flying to her mouth.A man in overalls, a…

In my parents’ day, they called lovers flames,and I’d try to imagine this literally.I remember a girl asking if I wanted to make love,which I thought then meant sweet talk:You are breathtaking.My first loves were older; they took the top,their hair fell and swept my face.I felt their heat as if at any momentThey’d flood…

It’s the last dayof teachingin prison and timefor my promise:They could readme. Lay my lifeon that wobblingtable. Ignore fora momentthe torn coversof their rejectanthologies. Ignorefor a momentthe camera watching,the speaker tellingthem where theyneed to be:to Buddhist call-out,to meds, to cell.They’re grinning;I never giveanything away—not a pencilnot a secret.The first card flipsand Jeremiah saysLooks like you’ve…

She sank and died—the girlfrom out of town that summer.They pulled her bodylike waterweed, then winter came,enclosed the lake in glass, and sealedthe dark cavern of our questions.We skated on the frozen shell.All around, the mountains glitteredchained in ice. The lake was pale blueand cracked with stars—We lay on our backsacquiring a sense of the…

“as if more than mortality brightened the air,like a girl tanning on a rock alone”—Derek Walcott Weighing less than a bead of perspiration, a mayflyalights on her breasts as if she’s chosen to wearthe identity that’s chosen her in this heat where the borders of beauty evaporatealong with the past. How long since she’s been…

Despite the electric gate to the driveway,it wouldn’t be hard to get inside the house.It’s white, with a matching fire escape, a pool-ladderleading up to the second-floor porch. I’d just have to be careful scaling the spikeson the five-foot wrought iron fence,move stealthily through the manicured shrubbery,past the rubber chicken on a rod,a throw from…

The Scheherazades played bridge everyThursday afternoon. Probably there werereasons for this as the ladies in the groupmight, on occasion, attest. The sea was therebefore them, its meaning immeasurable.After a twelfth trick, the one most beautifulsurprised by confessing there had beenno ”relations” for six years. Some nervouslaughter, of course, and the one who was onceMiss Duluth…