Poetry |
“My Father for the First Time,” “Death, Second Person,” “Summer Wind Up” & “The Tempest”
“He practiced flamboyant grudges, drive-by / destruction. And yet I imagined he’d forgive. / Death can do that. You forget, you reconcile.”
Poetry |
“Juvenilia”
“She found the bird beneath the tree. It was a kinglet, / ruby-crowned, a juvenile. Stiffened by the time it took / to find it, fledging dropped from the numbered nest.”
Poetry |
“Souvenir From the Gone World”
“I asked the address / of his childhood home // and was told, It’s on Second Avenue — / You go down a little hill, / then half way up a hill …”
Poetry |
“Dear Deborah” & “The History of Western Philosophy”
“The body is nothing, trembling here / Waiting for the room with its antiseptic bed / To be clarified and readied — a life suspended / Between two infinite middle fingers …
Poetry |
“What I Want Isn’t What I Want to Want” & “And What of the Fleshy Contents of My Skull?”
“I want to dig in, eat fancy-lace polymers / for breakfast, each inorganic molecule /’ a unicorn in captivity.”
Poetry |
“Ars Poetica III (Time Destroys All Things)” & “When We See (No Joke)”
“And in plain sight the missionaries and pickpockets — the mouths they refuse. / Including the baskets and hours that form the world you have no use for.”
Poetry |
“Caribbean Nocturne” & “At the Bottom of Tea Cups”
“I’ve never heard anyone say / referring to a tea drinker // that he was in his cups / though it could be said of me …”
Poetry |
“By Rote”
“An oak tag string of ABCs / Block style hangs above the blackboard. / Chalk dust tinges the letters of the law. / Diligently, a small girl copies …”
Poetry |
“After Our Shift. Sanitarium 51,” “The Troubled Sleep of Jimmy L. Sanitarium 51,” “Mrs. Asra Leaves a Note Under the Vase. Sanitarium 51” & “The Professor Calculates Spring Using Schrondinger’s Thought Experiment.Sanitarium 51”
“No flashlights, just moonlight. Behind Dining’s dumpster. / Insomniacs and talkers, in rat grey pajamas. / Yeah, true we were breaking Rule Seven …”
Poetry |
“Felled Oak”
“For you, an eyesore, for me, an object / of light and form dignified by age // and trust, weathered or beaten, but there — / as if it would have reason to stay, // as if I had cause to see it as lovely.”
Poetry |
“Girls Department,” “1961” & “All At Once”
“My wet skirt stuck to the seat. / That breathtaking fist of pain / when the thickened wall I couldn’t see / shed its unbreathing ball of cells …”
Poetry |
“Summer, So Full”
“falcons coasting / on updrafts, / bougainvillea in bloom / and the dark high-res / glimmering indigo …”
Poetry |
“Today My Mother Called to Apologize”
“Nothing else — she wanted to hang up / immediately after. She is 92. I am 64. / When I was 3, she put me in a diaper / to punish me for an accident.”
Poetry |
“Speaker,” “Fierce,” “Confessional” & “Concessions”
“Feral is the name given to what is wild / by what isn’t. Whatever it was that owned me, / that kept me guarded, has vanished, / has let me go …”
Poetry |
Poems from “The Lisa Sequence”
“… The last hour waiting / for clemency that does not come, telephone deadly still, petition / ignored. Last shifting its meaning from final to endure.”