Category: Poetry

DREAMING OF THE GOVERNOR AND THE MAYOR PLUNGING INTO THE RIVER Perhaps conjoined at the ankleby a concrete block, like the tailsof Pisces. Yes, let them embrace the East River together in early morning so they may be blessedat last by the light of a new dayrising beautifully without them.         MY DAD’S BIRTHDAY…

SOBRIETY SONNET                          with apologies to my brother, 11 months clean The boy who cried sunlight, summer rain, bird-in-the-bush, in the hand, who cried fiddleheads, brook trout, berries in the field by the chicken house, again and again who cried lilacs, from each bloom a hit of nectar…

  Young walruses, we all must adapt! For example, some of your ancestors gouged the world with four tusks, but you can grow only two. It’s hard to say what evolution plans for your kind, but if given a choice,you should put in a request for thumbs. Anyway, congratulations! You’re entering a world that’s increasingly hostile and cruel and full of people…

Diaspora Sonnet 40 So much improvisation—the improvised way  I enter a room. The way I walk market aisles: with purpose borne of worry. The tumult of cereal packages, an array of landscapes crossed over in a plane. I am flying above the patchwork of mornings and feeling dizzy. Truly I am  making this up as…

You were a room filled with paintings of storms in the style of Turner and each was gold— end-of-day gold; gold as you want me to be. Gold as a sweet horse in a picture book. Gold in that way, your way; Gold when it’s lost, how it seems more gold. A girl’s tooth. That…

After being with you, I saw a beetle stuck on its back, scuttling its legs. I could have crushed it with my heel but I left it alone for the ants to devour— the ants did not come.   

Riga Mountain trail,  our last hike before the blizzard. The hawk we spooked is perched across the pond— a scent of snow hangs heavy in the air. The rabbit’s eye is big and berry-bright, lucid as a black marble. He looks untouched except his skull— an open, red pomegranate. No clotting yet.

Looking down from my second story porch I see the flowering quince they say will thrive in almost any soil. This one is no doubt dead, though its faithful branches reach up and outward, insulting the brittle dry sticks that pin the massive bush to fertile ground. Watery red flowers the color of diluted blood…

 Stocking the Pond                500 bluegill in a tank  on the back of a truck,               parked on the bank,  pouring them out. Fifth grade,               early spring. The year  I was taught there were right               and wrong ways to be  a man. I watched               the waterfalling bodies  of the fish, our pond               like a holding cell.…

After I gave him my dented hands which in any case were still valuable                                                                                   …