Category: Poetry

Not the storm, but the calm. Not the flurry of attention               called to the sky.Not the rumour of a hurricane on the horizon.Not humidity, the mosquitoes rising               like smoke from the fields. Not a history of revisions we call             …

  Each morning is the same            but I can’t help but look again and again: skin smooth peony petal, vanilla-ice-            cream-cool; hair a ripple of milk pulled back too tight (though sometimes I forget the aching);             even my eyes are eggshells. Only…

  The absence of faith is the beginning of death.What I call flesh is prayer bound to my bones. All my prayers begin as songs from my bonesand end with blood instead of amen. How I wish I began every request with amen,like when I ask God to let doubt pass from me. Amen. Oh…

We are building a house small in the woods,  refuge from disquietor vague boredom. It must weather distance,the hurt of proximity. We do not mean to,though we are so good  at breaking, scavenging old bone and feather, stalks of  wildflowers outlasting the hour of their heads.  You are boss, and look boss, hammer and spackle knife and blue hair,…

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.