Poetry |
“Imagine That”
“I learned about Mr. Harrigan, tracked his slaveholding. / We found Mr. Colrain when my wife’s mother sent old papers / no one read at any more. By chance we discovered / their joint tenure in the South Carolina legislature.”
Poetry |
“The Generations”
“When my father spoke to my aunt from Guaynabo, / I cried when he said to me, his face pale and drawn, / ‘Your cousin tried wading through an undertow.'”
Poetry |
“Shorn,” “Visitation” & “All movement mimics other movement”
“I say, for a bloom born of / a time of temperance, your ticking is lush. / which is to say, I miss afternoons detonating / in the growing sound of insects.”
Poetry |
“This Summer the Girls” & “Relics of the Mountain West”
“This summer the girls are all wearing blue / fingernail polish, looking as if they’ve drowned / or suffocated, or been poisoned by carbon / monoxide. As if they’re trying on for size / death …”
Poetry |
“A Framed Photograph”
“The day after my father died, / his boss, Charlie, came to our house / carrying a box. // Early evening, / my mother and I welcomed him / into the foyer.”
Poetry |
“Resilience V” & “Lying Flat”
“‘We don’t want to see ourselves in five years.’ Tired of building their platforms, all the young people began to slump in their chairs.”
Poetry |
“We Drew Out the Feeble Language”
“Vienna in August and we walked / Klimt to Mozart, drank / Wiener wasser, a phrase that made our odd // American hearts laugh …”
Poetry |
“So Many Wars,” “The Salt Cathedral in Zipaquirá” & “Love Poem for My Brother”
“Hard to un-learn the art of leaving / when I’ve had good teachers all my life / to show me how it’s done.”
Poetry |
“My Mother’s Hands” & “By Chance”
“These are the hands / that pour his evening drink, / the one we all know / he should not have …”
Poetry |
“The Night Children” & “If I Had Been There”
“There’s no village, no country / that isn’t being mapped / by night children with their folded wings.”
Poetry |
“sobriety”
“i can’t tell you about the drinking / unless i tell you about the past // i don’t want to tell you about the past / because then you’d see me shake”
Poetry |
“Three-Legged Dog”
“She’s overweight and quick to cry, my sister, / who licks Jiffy from a tablespoon, who wants to know / why I call her husband an asshole in front of everyone / when he enters the room.”
Poetry |
“Tosca”
“When I dream, I dream / of emptiness. I am standing at the end / of a long hallway. As at the end of Tosca, / the dead all rise again, applauded / the same …”
Poetry |
“Come into the house / Come in now!”
“the yard is / her factory / everything / calls to / her to be / made”
Poetry |
“His Name Is Sam,” “No One’s Perfect” & “At the Church in Sacramento”
“I used to see him every week when we were kids / at the main public library. I would stare at him, wishing / he sat closer to me. Not once did I think he’d stab me.”