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Notice
the Pope’s
white skin beneath the red velvet robe.
Contemplate the thin papery silhouette

After limb snap and tree crash, months
of air filled with sawdust and the sounds
of wood chippers and log loaders­: a mountain
shorn,

in five miles hail becomes sunlight
in one week wood becomes bees
80 years tween first and last breaths
parts of lungs never visited

When lightning wallowed in the orchard's lap – / that raw, sudden violence from the clouds almost / offhand

The same words / In the same sequence, / Everywhere we go.

The same people, / Echo pretense / About everything we know.

It's monopoly and / you're the banker / or craps and it's / your right hand

At least the scarecrow realized
he didn’t have a brain.
He wanted one because he
recognized / that brains

Remember that timewe reclined in the carand your own wordssplit you in two? It was kind oflike when that cooking show ladywe always watched slit open a pomegranate andruby red seeds just

I stood tall at thirteen, / they asked me to kiss you / goodbye, it was what / you needed,

And all the trembling shadows, the waylaid verses, how darkening they become me now as I lean over this page, the shadows before me and beneath me and all around, the shadow

Like a mermaid’s nipple denied

        the sea’s lesser chill,
        we harden.

        We tighten up.

Happily resigned
To being
Mostly unnoticed
You somehow find
A small patch of light

I remembered you last week
leaning on the front gate
hair left in a photo album.
Fingers thicker than January wind.

The Hurt Red-faced, open-mouthed–a silent scream in front of me–you press your small hands to your sides. At six, you live a pain so deep you cannot speak or cry. Breathless, between

Rogue Sparks Coming this way is cigarette ember, put out on metal receptacle ridge, wetted down with ocean air and admiral fell promises of evening balm, of little flickers in pyre wood,

Snow and Crocuses 1.       Snow and Crocuses       Thanksgiving ahead, and first snows, snows and crocuses, Wordsworthian spring, implying daffodils. But first there’ll be holidays and snow, a tree to stand and dress

The Songbird Market Beijing, a man with the faith of ages Turns to offer a courteous reception. We have come to see about a bird, One whose song we clearly hear, Not

Come Back I will paint you over. I will revise each line. I’ll stand immersed in the dregs without a coat of stones, an anchor to be tied on. I will face

Munitions Magnanimity The targets for the tolerant came with a gun rack and delayed viral police how-to videos: A ticking clock mock-calm after the lynching parties and National Guard deployments. When the

Prophesies The white blossoms fallen to the furrow rise again and swirl on March breeze past branches bearing the green buds of plums. The high egret circling beats an angel’s ivory wings.

More Like Horace Under a green and wilted sky, the heat softens and obscures me. Too slack to eulogize my cousin, who died of leukemia after a lifetime of sporting a beard

If you take the edits, take the critiques, to better bloom in season and embrace the wind that robs you of your seed, there will be a moment after decades of shaping,

News From North Country   The bright-eyed buxom broadcaster in thick makeup her mother never quite taught her to brush on correctly suddenly engulfs and swallows up her fellow newscaster boring the hell out

I Curse Thee While standing on your head. Like peanut butter. From Carlsbad Cavern. I curse thee in milk. By the string of the moon. With aphids. I hurl my curses while

growing old at once sober inside the thought of the time you stood on a black cliff, over a black desert, in a martian place realizing you are still alone even in

­­­­Peccadillo The church bells ring each hour precisely three minutes too soon, and everyone in town shrugs off that resounding, persistent defect, performs the minor calculus required to transpose the error of

I forgot all about that photo. Darkrooming away, and you suddenly upghosted through the developer bath. I apologize. Nobody should have to drown twice.

The Fawn Found dead in the neighbor’s yard a humid morning in July. The flies already at its eyes, its neck bent back over the place where it was torn in two,

Too much August; it must be parceled night by night ingested in slippery hours. Outside the theater we find ourselves lost, wander into the first restaurant we see. Chandeliers, girls in short

Egeria densa clogs sloughs, especially during low water. Love is a lie the cup tells the coffee for the mouth. Even the eye can’t deny the parrot behind the self-denying yo-yo. An

Excavations 3 A poetry denies its end in any descriptive act, I mean any act which leaves the attention outside the poem. – Robert Creeley At night in my bed in the

One Moment in the Middle of Things Virginia Beach, the late 80s – dying already. A pale imitation of its former self, the shops along the strip selling paper thin pastel t-shirts

An apple seed is stuck to a midnight tree branch. It swells and seeps red honey, sticks close to trunk-hollow and bird’s nest. What I mean by this is I love you.

Avihs || Vishnu Mornings || they disperse || beyond || the corn Fields, || separately. ||Sunday She || throws Her partner’s computer || (midnight) Into the garage.|| George ||who In many ||

Folds in an ancient fuselage orchestrate an arrangement of accents. Each accent is an accident. A moist white shirt like a waiting moon sways into oncoming traffic. _______ steps crumble new as

Dead Women in Old Stories Above the hills a starry slate       the lights} on the coast                       a necklace weight               of faded-flower                               yellows moonlight suspends      the tides the

Curls are brass like a trumpet, you eye me with the snare of your iris, I watch as Coral roars with the twenties, she runs her fingers on an ivory and ebony

How disappointed the first flyers must have been to finally rise above the feathery white heavens and not find themselves surrounded by angels        but rather the raw and exquisite beauty of nature

  View A white petal falls as the bee drinks the Mandarin bloom then moves on. Purple and red tin pots with orange flowers hang from the top rail of the neighbor’s

At the Corner At the corner of Division & Reclamation where the town is split between chaos & choice, the edge where you look across the tracks toward dry sage-lined hills rounded

  Meeting the Resistance In her twenties during World War II she joined the Netherlands resistance and cycled out to meet newcomers dropped by parachute from British planes and walked each one

I want an image of Thespis commissioned from an ordinary block of stone. Done by a craftsman who seeks my approval and won’t be happy when through. The mark and the scar on

Boundaries Lucy, boundaries might be made of Roman stone walls or hedges, but they’re boundaries all the same. I would walk through the English fields in winter and my feet sank with

1. Revisionist Ministry of the Martians Seared almost scorched, rolling potato eyes and broccoli heads now dead, this medicated dedicated bougie meditator’s Sternoed noodle soul casserole shimmies down a dwarf shrub, boards a

Henry Miller’s Typewriter How did you know that I dreamt about Henry Miller’s typewriter last night? Stolid gray Remington, with a bloodshot aura, green plastic keys, all-black ribbon, and the faintest odor

1 At the window, last night’s words, ashen Against the glass Black petals in the vase, delicate As the hour fading from us Their deep scent stirring us From deeper dreams Sleepwalkers,

Miss Dolly Bumfrey We bear Muscat To your sick by traction. Making headway at that driving test Was the needles up-and-up. Annihilating two easy-natured cherubs, En route to a wall – pop,

Rae Armantrout: I put a glose on you Habitat-themed enclosure. Zen-inflected mug. Around the block dogs bark at absence.   Habitat (entire poem) ― Rae Armantrout   (with nods to Perloff, Silliman, &

  How I Like My Women I like my women slight and frail, bones hollowly light, ribcages pressed like prison bars against the skin. I love the women with stomachs caved in, divots carved

you ask me how I occupy myself in my dreams well, if I see one I see the rest I am not an optimist mostly I do not understand the work of

The Forsythia in Bloom Suddenly in the early spring evening the forsythia bush is aflame with light, a monastery with hundreds of cells. Throughout winter’s darkness, these monks had gone to bed

Milton’s Well Predestination stopped her on the road, speeding in some overcommitment, racing impetuous down green skylines, pushing the envelope of the just-possible. On an S bend with reversed camber, on a

For Fred (Veteran’s Day, November 11th, 2004) We miss you, Mr. Rodgers. You told us straight. You were not purple Mr. Rodgers, not an extinct species that sang about the sun, ripping

1. I will say our secret… a stone holding its own weight we were lovers holding each other warm in the unfolding there was a garden of silk soft buds of fabric