poetry

  If he were in hospital, unable to speak, I would hold his hand, creature to creature. I’d do that for anyone. Rough brush of fingerprints. Hello, I’m sorry to hear you’re sick. In my ears, cicada buzz of arterial … Read More

  there’s nothing in the etiquette guides for a marriage                    so short so I wake early on a Saturday, bring home Subway                        the egg whites because I want you to live forever   or at least outlast me … Read More

I opened the door but you did not enter.   It is easiest to blame the angel. Fact: a woman who walks beneath its outstretched wings will miscarry.   There is no leavetaking but that which the body allows.   … Read More

– in memory of Kurt Brown It shows tremendous presence without a lot of weight, this wine from Côte-Rôtie,   this supermodel from Marseille who cheats at poker, legs better than the wine’s,   this lightness in my step as … Read More

The Red Leaf was of the blood of Christ—“Advice to Little Children,” The New-England Primer, 1727   Berries of Fever-bush thrive incarnadine incarnate— though the first hard Frost has kissed Verbena, Hyssop, Thyme and, touching, turned them black. Where is Heaven’s white … Read More

  North of Timber Management Solutions, amid the gaping   concentric sun-circuitry of truncated fir-stumps, fireweed flourishes,   fireweed crackles like the feedback of a sun-struck accord.   Fireweed, fireweed, uninvited honeyed weather where acres were,   radio telescopes sound … Read More

  Not the Book of Wonders, not the Way, not the Word,   but crying in Wilderness, Make ready, the mightier Text is yet to come—   I blaze the Trail.   And I’m followed, fondly, ’til hands receive the … Read More

  Two by two the kernels hit the metal pail, blue stalks stiff as thin batons stripped green braids from yellow tails,   nightshade cast in shadows between fronds. They grow like cattails in the barley light, reaching upward across … Read More

                                                             for Julie Frega   Next week, I’ll tie a string … Read More

  After 90—a little bird-like cocking of her head to gather what she could from the periphery.   Her eager pupilage, dulled.   Retinas—their rites by rote, their prayers for light—unanswered.   She couldn’t pick apart the night she lived … Read More

  Madame Maman at the kitchen table, in turban and curlers,   reading the cards. Clucks and sighs suggest my stint on earth gets grim.   She won’t say how or why. Am I to be enticed by diamonds, beaten … Read More

  Fear yields the perfect ping of a wine glass in a war zone, magnifies anemones into fields of enemies. In case of emergency it breaks your skin.   Shrapnel is a foreign body. Fear is family, biting the holiday … Read More