poetry

  Taken for granted, his teeth, when taken from his mouth one crisp spring day, suddenly seemed so useful and white (the clever way they end-stopped the sad, pink sponge of his gums), but when he removed his dentures at … Read More

  Winter-honed knife, halving the space between us. Each week, the having and not having. And in the fields beside the road, the calving.

  There’s Monet at the edge of the water-lily pond. It’s 1905. The Great War is still no menace, but he can sense his mission: to paint canvasses that will bring others the tranquility he feels when he gets it … Read More

  I am a fourth magnitude star above Manhattan, a full moon rising beside me. I am blue socks in a drawer of blue socks. I am the shell passed over by children and hermit crabs alike. I am the … Read More

  The pond we kissed beside was full of soda cans and stars. The bathroom sink continues to drip into the orange stain of itself. The same color would be pleasing in a moth. Here’s something I’ve learned: The more … Read More

  Hammurabi loved flowers and strewed his bridal bed with rose petals, blood red. Nero loved the fuchsia for attracting hummingbirds and their delectable tongues. Louis XIV sent Madame de Maintenon lilies, though he smelled like a bedraggled billy goat. … Read More

      “All actual life is encounter.” Martin Buber   The cows look slowly up, flick flies with their tails, with their ears, the whole of their flanks twitching like wind through wheat. They stamp their feet, shrug their … Read More

  His hand sunk in me like a sunset. I lay on my back and listened the night to black. My skin smelled deciduous. I breathed petals in the silence. The organs in my body crowded closer together; I prepared … Read More

  Dark Lake isn’t bad—necessarily. Dark Lake is the mouth of a cave. A dark pupil in everyone’s eyes. The lost dog opens his soul. Dark spills out on the highway. Fuck flows darkly from a tongue. A dark story … Read More

  Think of what the Water takes when it is stirred, or what blocks it grinds to paste no matter early edge or gloss. Yet were his body stone enough to suffer year and years of froth before the might … Read More

  When Daniel is dreaming don’t wake him. What he sees will escape time: feather and horn, hunger, what angels do when God points a finger: Pluck men from a fire’s gut. Seal the jaws, of anything that bites. If … Read More

  It’s not true you know, it said that he doesn’t care for you. I know, it said, that sometimes he turns away when you are most amourous but you must admit that you are most amourous most of the … Read More