Poetry

Home with H

Translated from Danish by Thomas E. Kennedy         Especially in spring in a large party it is clear which persons are closest to death: They don’t know why they avoid each other’s gaze One stares himself blind … Continued

AUTOBIOGRAPHY ||| Dunes Review

      My mother’s eyes—a green sometimes blue, or gray—     my father studied them the way he studied light              with his camera lens constantly, there was a sadness, Slavic and cloud-like. My … Continued

Totem

      Hatched from the wet egg of a sculptor’s eye a quarter century ago, it grips its squat stump, wings outstretched as if to dry. Its bones are wires, its plumage ragged strips of pages torn from my … Continued

Snapshot

The Husband & I stand next to each other: not speaking, sometimes speaking. See? Asks the photograph. A closeness or almostness? The photograph is meaningless except insofar as it is a record of us in a place at a moment … Continued

No. 1964

    Translated by Robert Hedin and Dag T. Straumsvåg I’m prisoner 1964, my birth year. My cell number is the same as my phone number. I often sit in front of my cell door looking for cracks in the … Continued

Sex Machina

    Against a xeroxed purity I’m learning to say My pleasure Pouring one out For narrative unity Watching soap operas On a stained futon I’m learning about free will How little I have Nature produces automata Opening an email … Continued

Debt Free

    I knew someone Who went broke throwing clam bakes A generous backfire There are wet dreams It aches to wake from Like unlearning the axiom that To love anyone You have to love everyone Watching my love rescue … Continued

Object Permanence

    Making out inside a Richard Serra Strikes me as the right way to take in art Like embracing an echo The moment examined mercurifies An eviscerated longing I feel like a voyeur Eating warm cheese at the gallery … Continued

Unlike nostos, algo is unspecified.

nunca sé por dónde empezar, así que decido hacerlo al comerme una fresa incontable la cantidad de semillas can you say I’m of two minds? yo diría que tengo ideas encontradas lo cual abre dos posibilidades: que se encuentren como … Continued

A Kind of Poetry

    Sometimes you turn to poetry the way you turn to another country. Everything is better, more humane. You notice things you wouldn’t otherwise. You notice things. Watching gardeners trim branches for birds to fly through reminds you of … Continued

Scrittore Traditore

Translated from Spanish by Curtis Bauer   I fell in love with a boy when I was seven years old. I could have fallen in love with a girl, but in my school the boys and girls were separated, so I … Continued

The Birds

    And later, in the empty room upstairs   AAAAAAAAAAAthat will stay empty because it’s a lookout   AAAAAAAAAAAJames and I are staring at a cardinal in a tree and I say   AAAAAAAAAAAhe’s so red and James says … Continued

The Almost Audience (for Phyllis Wheatley)

      Of Senegambia and seven, she should have been of the not-to be-taken, the not-high price, for a not-prime boy’s a girl of the unsuitable labor (birth not work)—and that years away. (Some of the captured, their spirits: … Continued

Snow

      It used to settle on the crowns of trees unevenly, so that gravity or a breeze could make a fringe fall down, the fluttering particles meeting their two- dimensional shadows, off- white occluding off-white.   Children could … Continued

Action Origami

      How much can you do with one piece of paper— creasing, tearing, adding volume with air? You can make a mythic sea monster toppling a tall ship in high, high seas, as my seatmate in 30C, in … Continued

Circum-Navigation

      The boats return Heavy from cities and distance.   The crickets fall asleep. A child listens to the hollow of a conch.   Perhaps it is the moment for another trip At the bow, for certain, the … Continued