poetry

In the dream or half-dream half waking I was filling a book with writing about a child’s survival, and longing. As I kept writing the book grew thicker. What were the pages filled with? I thought, at least I can … Read More

  In late summer. The hunger of bears. Its logic. Its shifting mouth. Its swift stripping. And prodigious energy.   She looks up as if to say, I will not perish. See me. Turns her head toward the red berries. … Read More

  —with thanks to Geoff Notkin   —a piece of it, lunar rock, gingerly, as directed. I gave him the moon, or as we call it, mah, the H heard too. In Farsi, one word means everything like it; milk … Read More

    You were my Persephone until you abducted yourself. From me. Gone (    ) Where? Why? How? Who are you? My body echoes with your absence, with once-and-lost inflections. I do not remember seasons. Time is a dry riverbed. … Read More

  Summer burned easily. And everyone had something to say. The rock said, be finished with sweetness. The tree said, repeat like a lie. The ground said, a mouse is a garden. The mouse said, stay out of the garden. … Read More

When my evangelical cousin texts You must never have witnessed a miracle my mind goes to Doug punting the basketball. We were ten. He kicked it a good thirty yards, uphill, meaning only to get it to me — this … Read More

  Hair chopped short as it will get. The risen boy practices forgetting as the pilgrim does. He is a vocabulary of starlings and salt.    

                                                after Sally Mann                          —silk and honey the hair is after so much rain // but not the skin // the skin is coral // leaf-torn & bee-pitted // humped up & sloping to where the neck is vapor // … Read More

  Let the wind whip a canvas with coffee grounds and leaves, the easel upright on a porch with boards missing like molars. Give the wind time and pigment: the reedmace-colored whiskey my grandfather hid in his overcoat, the pistol-black … Read More

  Another haunting symptom her late Dementia Won’t let me forget. I mean that night I found her Sitting straight up in bed. All glassy-eyed: “Look at him. Oh look at how tired he is. My father. He has to … Read More

  only after a thorough comparison                   of clutch and diet,              with meager fruit and seed                  regimens avoided                                 (before I attempt a change of nest)                                        ° °              with what deliberation                 do you deposit food               deep … Read More

  Steam rose from the old black Ford. You could see where the engine block had cracked, but not where the auto industry hit the wall– goodbye DeSoto, goodbye Edsel– goodbye factory jobs, payrolls and little shops. Goodbye father’s office. … Read More