poetry

  The June air thread- bare with rain.   Cloud cover, the un- quilted cotton batting.   My eyes stitch this (brick-red,   beech-green, sea- pearl-sky) design be-   cause your eyes, your blighted hands can   no longer work … Read More

  One quake after another was triggered by complimentary chardonnay on an Alaska Airways flight out of Burbank   And by clouds nerved and sheathed, clouds dark and branching   Quakes swarmed the ambiguity of “anchorage,” one weight dropped, one … Read More

  This year’s quake was centered in the body seven years ago replaced by the body now   “Some facts generate their own metaphors, and the news is surreal,” said a resident on earth, lifting a vessel with her heart, … Read More

  This epoch’s quake was centered in “no man’s land,” sounding suddenly strange   And striking us maybe more so as “no woman’s land,’’ said a seismologist and single mom whose child was fathered and abandoned by a surrealist, “and … Read More

  Before I’m even out of the car I know he ate her, the Holstein. With her yellow-green behind, yellow-green nose. I’d renamed her—DoeNee: short for this poem’s title. My own family said don’t tell a man what to do … Read More

  It seemed easy for us to throw away our toy horses and the nicked building blocks, to realize that teasing wasn’t the best way to go about things, that we were better off without the stained glass nightlight in … Read More

  Three snowy days this town is rich in icicles. If you couldn’t care you were never a kid. How do you prefer your glint and glare? Secondhand, pan to the candidate’s daughter’s pearl-harnessed neck, the glancing opaque watch face … Read More

  I hear the waves slapping higher on the planks. Are you awake? I hear a fire leaning on the door. Someone should check on him. He’s only turning in his sleep. But listen. Lightning bugs are sizzling out in … Read More

  Because the final piece ended with the organ turned off but the keys still pressed down,   there was a rush of air, as if the whole church exhaled, all of us part of that great stage whisper.   … Read More

(Johnson City, Tennessee)   What a ruckus—those fricatives inside that truck, spitting out roadside muck digging itself in deeper.   Overhead the sky’s one eye looks down. Near full it rose, rusty as the truck’s undersides and dented with shadows. … Read More

  To keep out the sand I built a house to uncover   each night its black name I built   poems I sang to keep small things   small I had questions for the trees   I had questions … Read More

  This, the old month when we live inside listening to talk-radio or watching afternoon movies like children sick with the flu.   Tonight I danced a corpse road tapping my tambourine and shaking my fist at happiness   Branches … Read More