When you collapsed the first timeat the dinner table, you fellnot like a hero in Homer, not likea great tree with a concussive thumpthat raises a dust cloud that blindsthe battling soldiers inside itso they can’t tell enemies from friends—but implodinglike a tall building shaken at its foundationthen crumbling as if made of spackle,as if…
Poetry WorkshopPrinceton, 1980 We had water fights at home,she said of the subject of homewhen it stuck its big headawkwardly into the roomand sat down. We others at the tablegazed at it, at her—this mousy senior who looked thirteenwith her pale frail body,bumps for breasts, and hair dull brown.She hadn’t said a word all term….
The worst thing that could happen did.She had a little girl who died.They took his parents while he hid.Your wife committed suicide. The guards raped him with a broom.He was beaten and left for dead.She woke to someone in the room.Then he was on her in the bed. The man seemed nice but he was…
Jagged are names and not our creatures. —Veronica Forrest-Thomson i wish i had a better name to be called by like you might call a dog at a lake and she would surely turn& i could eat your name for days: i would gladly bow my head o as the ploughman to the plough& become the machine…
Author’s Note: The speaker of the poems in The Golden Abacus is alynched man. As his body decays, animals, the wind, carry the body todifferent parts of the world. What isn’t carried away seeps into the earthand travels back in time as it mixes with the earth and stone. He, thebody, constantly transforms and speaks…
Great Crested Grebes It is spring—let us call it spring—where February tips the wings of March with whitened skies; here, where this dance of birdsis the slowest, kindest measure, the arc and rainbow of their mirroringa graceful shimmer and a bright display. The water and reflection askno question of themselves. Headshake, head turn. He dives…
i. Rahim Oh my son Let my lovecushion the weight of your head. Let me take your hurt I will hold it while you restI will fold it into my body. Sleep, my angel,my flower, my brave, sweet boy. [Child with extreme hydrocephalus—deformity of face, body and ear—and defects of cerebral nerves.] ii. Sabir I…
My first steal: an ice-pop, coaxed from the cornershop freezer andlifted: a brittle, syrupy limb that fused—beneath my shirtsleeve—onto my skin. Second, a tidy slice of apple strudel (cadged behind the café proprietor’sback). Its fudge of apples branded my pocket with a bloom of grease. Years on, the shoes: size eight men’s brogues. I had…
She says it’s haven’t, not ent. Miz Jezameen Henacre wears long-tailed glovesspilled over her skinnies like milk froth. She fears palm-skin maybe, its thinness. She teaches me how to say her name,sharpen the een. She totters her bell skirts, her own self, here from the Mission housemidway through Sundays, when our floor and walls are spanking and…
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