I see pictures of you when you wore a girl’s body and it’s like you were in drag. I’m sorry it’s taken so long. In the most intimate days of my life I loved that body, its softness and folds, as I love you now: sideburns, Adam’s apple rumbling voice, far-blue eyes.
in morning light I load boxes onto a truck to be delivered to distribution centers far from here I do this fifty hours a week sometimes more at the same dock sweating and aching I don’t make the stuff I don’t see it in a store to me it’s all just a box I’m the... Continue Reading →
A friend died the same day another friend gave birth. I was all commiserations and congratulations, and the former were clichéd and prosaic and the latter forced and cursory. I don’t know whether sorry and happiness worked on one another to achieve some kind of insipid mean or if a poet, away from his writing... Continue Reading →
I wanted herto step away from the pond.Less Narcissus,more nurturer. She called me a whorebefore she called me victim—never survivor. I wanted my mother to love melike she loved the man who raped me,like she loved her next drink,her own reflection,the sound of her own voice. Instead,she stayed at the water’s edge,kissing her own reflectionwhile... Continue Reading →
We blew out enemy brains then blew our trumpets mopped the floors of clotting blood tuned our horns, turned our backs marched forward into the flood We were afforded no quarter we had bitter love for lack of agenda we blasted our way into the black, backs against bleak, narrow spaces skins of the dead... Continue Reading →
Everything is still inside of itself, and I’m looking at you through the fire again. My blue hydrangeas are wilting in the larger shadow of my pink hydrangeas. There is a circle of bridges at the end of the world, connecting themselves to each other — this is all a selfless effort, they think, but... Continue Reading →
The family farm was never quiet.Pine needles held every sounda snapped twig,the creak of a laddered stand. On any trail,a cousin or uncle might appear,just a nod,no words. Orange jacketshid in the branches,watchers stitched into the timber,holding their rifles steady. Now the facesblur into seasons,a custom fading,a tradition I still follow. The stands remain.Shadows swingbetween... Continue Reading →
You return to me in fragments, in particles. In bits and cuts. The safety-pinned t-shirt from the Ritz. A favorite pale pink jacket. A silver bracelet from Spain. The slanting light in one or another of our rooms up under the eaves. The lines from movies we’d repeat The gold ring from Cape Town we... Continue Reading →
Just yesterday, I was a maestrocajoling music from frenziedemails, staccato deadlines, thosewho fawned for favor with miraculouslyconjured old-world blintzes and rugelachto remind me of my grandmother.Today, their eyes avert as I stealdown the halls like the hauntingflute of Ravel’s Pantomime. I had ignoredthis unspooling of my life, the oncoming quietto be filled with crisp apples... Continue Reading →
this is a poem about poverty and class. it is not about the opening of a flower, or metaphors that suggest your life is a flower opening, or astonishment at nature. so you will not want to read it, and no one will bother to publish. but the real William Carlos Williams was a radical,... Continue Reading →
