poetry

look what you have built: the artificial lagoon (landlocked by dunes, too shallow, but you are the only one bothered by that) imported white-sand beach (upon which sunbathers gather their children and point at you) a double row of graceful, … Read More

What I despise are the wrong questions, the requests of the strivers: How much did they pay you? Oh the indignity. How did you meet so-and-so? The stupidity. Please, ask me how I remain a man after all I have … Read More

Of course there are nights when I crave a woman— Of course the hardness of the road gets to me, Of course I feel the Roman stones beneath my sandals, Of course the rain ruins my bones, flattens my remaining … Read More

The truth is, you never wanted to be normal; so the wily shoemaker says to me, when I find him transformed, a leather merchant in Verona, cavorting with the sellers of silk. What? You wanted to be a poet. Ahah. … Read More

I couldn’t take it anymore. Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Wolsey, Thomas Howard, Thomas More. It was like all those frickin’ Josés in 100 Years of Solitude. So I put the Toms to bed and I dreamt about Sally on the skids … Read More

I am holding two frog hearts in my palms; they are greenish, warm, labial. I am following the tell of the dream that eluded me upon waking yesterday morning, which I dreamed again last night: I immerse the hearts in … Read More

The threading finally shot on the window crank, I disassemble the unit and out falls a tiny egg, like a porcelain ball bearing. It may have been there for years. Which of the parrots that babble in the gable left … Read More

In a small Bolivian town on a narrow cobblestone path, a woman in a black bowler hat and white embroidered blouse sits at a tiny tin table in front of her sky-blue house selling shiny things that would catch a … Read More

My rifle is human, even as I, because it is my life. I will keep my rifle clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. —The Rifleman’s Creed I’ve heard the … Read More

Our grey home was visited last night by a storm. I woke to a green sky standing at my window. I told the storm it could not enter. My husband slept blue and sad like a saint. I live in … Read More

1 —What about here? I ask; brief shore; old blanket we slept under in Genesis; its skin of ripples, the river; out of the basket, sourdough, cheddar, plums. How can you look and not look back? over this marrying, of … Read More

The faces in Giotto’s Massacre of the Innocents in Scrovengi Chapel, must have been what the faces of mothers in Sarajevo looked like after a massacre during the Siege. They reached out when there was nothing to grasp, yet all … Read More