Even though she has set down The unwieldy entablature And walked back into her life, Her posture, Her disheveled intricate coiffure, Betray preoccupation. Preparing dinner, she slices The fluted celery stalk into drums, The mushrooms into ionic capitals. She is too old to be young anymore, The moonlight petrifies. She has left…
Hat on the bed, A peacock feather Dragged indoors From the blue-eyed weather, Reflection smashed, A baker’s dozen, Chain letter from An estranged cousin, The bumbershoot Bloomed in the hall, The ladder’s lintel, The owl’s call, The horseshoe’s frown, The salt knocked over & not tossed across The left shoulder, A…
(with a nod to X.J. Kennedy) The rope that makes of air a sphere, Or else a grin from ear to ear, Is something earth-bound feet must clear When the parabola swings round. Right before the snapping sound, You have to float above the ground. The trick is tempo, neither slow Nor…
Next time her skull is sliced open, she must have a mind limber as rubber, bending to the pain. Under the bright lights of the icy theater she will melt, allowing the saw’s buzz to fade into the sound of the surgeon entering her interior, surveying the field of tumors for the bad one. When…
She wanted a crypt like the temple of Dendur, an enormous monolith unshakeable as their marriage. He favored the granite sarcophagus gaily decorated with Victorian swirls and oak leaf cornices. She wanted poplars tall and straight—leafy and shameless as Italian trees of summer, if sadly deciduous. He preferred cypresses, their constancy through the seasons: shrubs—yew…
1. Precocious in her dotage, she teeters like a top unravelling, now spinning, now faltering, now lunging across living room carpets, over William Morris tendrils and Bokara medallions, past the leather sofa and beyond, arriving at the south window. She stoops over the hope chest with her watering can, drenching the amaryllis, dotting orchids and jade with ice, then pruning the cactus…
At the museum of his life, his leather duffle coat is behind glass. It felt like a poem-protection center. It was my responsibility to go home, put food out in the same place every day, talk to the people who came to eat, then organize them, food and poetry being a nourishment that shares a…
Stick in the mud, old fart, what are you doing to get the guns off the street? I am not here to pick on anyone. But now that they have shot Yosi, who ground my meat in Hingham, and his shiny pink meat-truck is for sale, I feel desolate. A gun is a vengeful machine…
This is a poem about a man who is dead. Sodomy laws treated him like a second-class citizen. There were ripple effects. With the aid of stimulants, he spoke like a truthteller and hungered for touch. Even when repugnant, his disinhibition seemed godlike, and what came out of him ravished me. Alas, tolerance builds rapidly,…
Those leaf blowers sure make a lot of noise. Since love is the way, we nuzzle in the morning, but wake up to high-decibel screaming, dust, and exhaust smoke. More and more, being myself seems to oppose the nature of the world. I don’t want updated privacy statements; I don’t want to accept cookies; I…
We were driving North. A sign read, There will be no more wilderness; I thought of my grandfather’s softness whilst hugging him when I was a little boy. It was as if God hadn’t created us naked or defenseless and we had all we needed. It was as if wilderness would never cease to be….
Back when I was a man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man I found myself able to summon a range of emotions that ran the gamut from common to not-so-common. The checkout person at H Mart trying to scan my fish sauce puts me in mind of a Roman housewife trying…
