Poetry

Poetry |

“Requiem,” “Breviary” & “Causa Sui”

“At the funeral mass, my father asked me to tie his tie. / A parishioner approached, and asked him who died. / My wife, he said, every word an elevation to climb.”

Poetry |

“Sometimes It’s Good to Stop Talking”

“I solved all the problems, all / the road blocks // to world peace, yesterday, while / under the influence // at the dentist.”

Poetry |

“These are some of the poems I read today,” “I went to the museum and stood staring at a chicken,” “If only the cute nannies at the park would trade glances at me” & “In Alice Notley’s poem ‘I must have called and so he comes'”

“Then I sat reading a book about the women who clean / other people’s houses, written by one of the women / homeowners. I thought about how the world is divided / between the books you start to read and the ones you don’t.”

Poetry |

“unknown caller”

“the threads that tie you to this life      will break / and break you / again                 and again     you will remember     the warmth / that resides in the garment       is not the garment itself”

Poetry |

“Solstice”

“Winter dulls the world and / the yearly deaths begin. / I can see a distance through the woods now.”

Poetry |

“Before the End of Time”

“Last night the moon shone so near, it seemed / a neighbor’s yard had flung its sundial skyward, // time to give a proper send-off to the cosmos”

Poetry |

“This Time Next Year”

“Fifteen minutes into the rain, the papier-mâché torso / of the makeshift guerrilla statue gets soggy // and the likeness of the dissident hero / bows to every passing commuter.”

Poetry |

“Garden Augur”

“As if the fox     while I was fasting / had run a blade / slit its prey / gobbled the guts & // left a skeletal coat …”

Poetry |

“Pilgrims” & “Postcard”

“This is a cross-state / drive of faded billboards, endless sagebrush, // crowded rest stops and unemployed landmarks, / a countryside the boy quietly grows to accept, // until they reach the first signs of city life …”

Poetry |

“Young Widowhood (ending in the ICU)” & “Monitors”

“Your usual grief is thick, pervasive, oozing / over everything, but tonight it’s erratic, an itchy // tag that scrapes your waist and some days you think of him / less …”

Poetry |

“Eleanor Remembers”

“It was the kind of town where if your neighbors / saw you walking, they assumed you’d lost your license — / too many DUIs — or your car, too many payments // missed.”