atlas goes under
hanna’s outer band bears down on the man.waves impound concrete piles on north padre island. a mist-maker, circling in his pen,
hurls the...
Drive to Thinness
Did the sound of the clicking hooves cause you to starve yourself?
Like a poor scavenger,you fed on scraps of sin and servitude,injecting...
Tyrant-Poem
I
We will shake our bodies like animals abandoned in the forest,
and the moon will sing lullabies for the
dead;
the dead who were mine and did...
The women in a familyI.In softest cream cashmere, silk drapingwrists of verbena, vanilla, rose.Bronze chargers under china, layersof scent: rosemary roasting turkey, breadbaking. Today...
For Therapy, I Mix Metaphors
From a frozen wedge of machine-split pine,tossed on this settling fire, one frayed, martyredfiber curls back and away like a...
Captives
Life and time have held us captives— turnedThe moon an imposter in the affairs of the night.
The justice-chirping canaries of yesterday have buriedTheir preaching...
The Pianist
Władysław Szpilman in Warsaw
Music grows on wave crests.When the sails of sound are at half-mast,music breaks up into pebbles.Each soloist is a finger...
Change of Elevation
When we first moved here, birds—red-headed house finches, I believe,a family—twittering high up
in the blue spruce that hangsfrom the neighbor’s yard. You...
ZULU, THE LANCE AND THE LANGUAGE
First, the language refused to enter my ear and be understood.
Instead I chased words around,
words that hovered beyond grasp
and...
Rock Paper Scissors
Water.
water to rub rock smooth water to rust scissors shutwater to dissolve paper into nothingnessthen return it to the cannibal trees
waterwaterwaterwaterwaterwaterwater
water to...
