Poetry

Failed Essay on Shapes

    Mother tells Girl, who chews the word like bubble gum.   Or, newly toothed, Girl really chews an elephant’s helping of gum.   More interested in blowing a bubble than in the names of what she can see. … Continued

You Whom They Border

      you border crosser in this simulation you constantly slip and call one border by the other’s name the names aren’t straight inside of you and you conflate one with two because you still yearn for another border … Continued

You, Amateur Interpreter

  You would have told yourself as your mother sat in the dentist’s chair, had you known who Wittgenstein was then, “I have to imagine pain which I do not feel on the model of the pain which I do … Continued

Anniversary

      I haunt you because I love you. You are constantly surprised by this. I am made of papier-mâché. You have dreamt of this before, a serious matter. You delight in torment. We were made for this. I … Continued

Hearses

    A professor once wrote me that to write of fruit or flowers or dreams, no matter how deftly, is the lowest form of metaphor, after processions. Years later, on the subject again, she said that time indicted horses … Continued

O.

The pleasures of the streets, perfumed with hazelnuts and cheese, medieval rivers, edges reduced to ice. Of walking irregular stones, past the silent, frustrated dead, in black shoes with laces. As we pass, my eyes meet his (same sad longing) … Continued

Historic District

    With purpose, you pull up the blinds. Light enters the room like a feeling violating a man. Sitting up in a bed built for a husband and a wife, I think for a second nature has taken us … Continued

[For the first time…]

translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson for the castaways of the Ker Anna       For the first time, we were naked. Who taught us to fall from the tree? What power had we wasted? To which blood founding our … Continued

[Pour la première fois…]

aux naufragés du Ker Anna   Pour la première fois, nous étions nus. Qui nous apprit à tomber de l’arbre ? Quel pouvoir avions-nous perdu ? A quel sang édifiant les palabres ? Combien d’oiseaux seront éperdus au bastingage de … Continued

The Philosophy Student

Translated from Italian by Stiliana Milkova   the philosophy student dreams she has insomnia her hair grows at night spilling from her bed even-numbered strands sprout into serpents’ heads odd-numbered strands splice into steel scissors serpents and scissors battle while … Continued

Heart Out

For Marina       My friend tells me my courage is my vulnerability, that in my overthrow of self lies refinement. What part un-hindering & what part exchange? Is it courage that extends the detangling of days? Maybe so. … Continued

Dog Ears

    Flouncing when she trots, Perked, cocked, flopped, Flattened, swiveled at Prompts of joy or itch Or curiosity, velvet Flaps opening on secret Zones of sound more Precious than what’s Hidden inside any silken Purse—awareness’s soft Synecdoches, alert just … Continued

Prepared Instruments

 After V.W. & H.D.T. How I wish someone would draft These lines for me. Perhaps I could Revise, develop, finish them, but Then whom would I owe, and what Would be demanded?  Someone Young, I suppose—amused or kind Or shrewd, … Continued

Further Notice

      Later, in the dream of having bought a rambling seaside house, in which just a few rooms had been finished—furnished, decorated— while others remained box-cluttered, empty of design or even purpose, I find a man I know … Continued

The Pretty Red-Head

“O Sun it is the time for flaming judgment,”—Guillaume Apollinaire, “La Jolie Rousse”   Always I was misunderstanding the words. Too many guns in the air to be happy. The news but a sour case of pink eye with a … Continued

Wilder Bluer Yonder

I packed my bags and left my home, and when I got to the edge, I did what everyone does and stepped off into the great blue Yawn, which I was surprised to find (though I shouldn’t have been) never … Continued

A Comforting Return

    1. On my desk, two silver and black pens— Zebra pens—wait casually at weird angles for the beginning of something         And in one of the corners of the room, a ghost-silver guitar fashioned after a … Continued

Your longed-for true form

      I watched the ceiling from my low bed. It bent when the girls danced upstairs. I looked out that window for a year, saw the water low under the bridge. I stayed as still as I could … Continued