poetry

  Sleek starlings flying low over whitecaps on the bay remind me of Ortygia, so far from where I am, exactly where I wish to stroll the white stones of Piazza Duomo, stop in at the bookstore for tea and … Read More

  It was a lonely farm in Prescott for a live girl, somewhat notorious        lewd        horse trader a restless wire humming up her spine. Watch the hills sink of iniquity        tavern … Read More

  Nights Daddy didn’t come, our mother turned down the roast and set out crayons. My sister peeled the rind from a color called flesh. I chose periwinkle like his Air Force ring. Mother stood at the window and blew … Read More

  I’m learning to collect poisonous plants to help preserve what little food I have left. In my small hollow a few inches of edible leaves insects and their dried bodies brittle wing-bright. I’ve been here all winter my skin … Read More

for Mark Green   This is therefore the intensest rendezvous. It is in that thought that we collect ourselves, Out of all the indifferences, into one thing. Wallace Stevens Why act as if I didn’t see him, then disappear like … Read More

  Dozens of half- bitten Ginger Golds sit cast around the pond because I tossed them there. How difficult it seems to walk through this orchard without eating and ditching. Too many times now have I been warned not to … Read More

  Quiet, these nights. Perched on the satin spread quilted and draped over the corner of the bed, queen-­sized. She plants her feet, picks tiny socks like beans off the trellis. Spun cotton her cash crop these days. She pairs them, folding the ankles one over the other. Precision, care, the mantle of motherhood. Perhaps an hour more before the sidewall scrapes the curb cut, the heavy door opens, the work boots stamp through shallow puddles, brown pine needles. Drained amber bottles muddle his thoughts. Still straddling a bar stool, he is safe and so are they. Later, fists and spittle will strafe walls, headboard, wife. Later, she will blot the blood from the house dress. Later, scrub the grease and food stains that radiate out, night-­blooming. Now, the halo of name brand bleach fills her nose. Now, bright rompers glow under lamplight. Before she sleeps, she lines the hall a basket for each child, fleet bracing for the squall.

If I had drunk more milk as a girl the magpies who settle in the brush wouldn’t mock me, the bats wouldn’t eat out my eyes as I fall asleep and the king wouldn’t come with his hungry stick and … Read More

  They don’t build their nest under the roof tiles anymore. They fly circles around the shed, they come and go with mud on their beaks but they don’t settle, they don’t make their nest here. Whither the children who … Read More

  Who are you, brother, with your gun at my temple, in your suicide vest, are you the reformer who received dream instructions from God to extinguish a handmaiden of the West But I am like you a mere elision … Read More

  After nine days of hanging, seeing just branches and leaves, the god forgot himself and focused on the tree, went into it as one in water loses themselves, stroke by stroke, the body more rhythm than man, went into … Read More

  The Triangle Offense :::   The offense requires wide spacing: Slave ships: Slave ships: 14- hour workday for sewing machine operators: $2 wage a day: Cuts and screens: Garment workers are agitated: Necks connected by wooden yokes: talk of … Read More