Poetry

The brim that broke the river came on land. Its skirts were vast from so much rain and made the grass beneath it dance, the wild hair of the drowned. We trailed it onto the road to where a cattle-grid gulped it down and where a hedgehog whirled in its mitten of thorns. Back then,…

Those no-treads. Scott and Tom and Scott Scott and Tom Tom, wealth-creator or small billionaire or lawyer or even, even, woman, groomed for the succession from yea-high, or there on sudden impulse or empanelled cosmeticists’ and focus groups’ say-so, committed to working (or porking) across the aisle, “humbled” (read insufferably puffed-up) to “serve” (recte rob…

Both of us disposable/ so disposed/ at each other’s disposal, so put me away, have me ejaculate against your hip as part of some exhaustive totalizing method,             leave the children with someone             (“make the necessary arrangements”), park around the corner at some ungodly hour twenty years ago, give the barest touch on the doorbell, hush,…

He meant the neck, of course, that little chapel between what we feel and what we say, that nave, that sacristy, where we are most vulnerable, always sticking our necks out, like deer at the edge of a clearing, like a fawn reaching up to nuzzle the mother world. For who but doctors or poets,…

Afterward, I tried to find the Faulkner story                                         where a man on horseback rides deep                                         into the swamp to find the Indians who are breeding runaway Negroes   whose children they will sell                                                   as slaves back to the same white man from whom the parents ran away— If I remember right, he wears a green-gray…

Is everyone who’s fat a bit thick? And is it true that oligarchs masturbate more than normal men and women do? that apricots “work well” with mayonnaise; that ugliness lasts longer than beauty; that helping people is a waste of time; that Lady Di was pregnant? Is it true that aphids start to breed at…

Everybody knows that men in uniform are suffering from low self-esteem; that those of us who’ve got a sweet tooth need to eat lots and lots of chocolate or else we lose our temper; Texas Longhorns never wear anything but orange; the human race is obviously progressing; gastropods are always inconsolable; celebrities abrade their skin…

There he is eatin’ like a horse with his neck brace around his elbow— robbin’ pears from the next table. He’s on the dole at home with a claim in against the Corpo for a dodgy curb job only he called it an f’ing footpath. You’d have to be on LSD for your foot to…

The maid’s unnecessarily loud scream was the first real hint that something was wrong: that, followed by the sound of the hot breakfast dishes hitting the floor and then another scream for good measure. By this time his wife had dived back under the covers begging him to go and see what the matter was….