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...
Firework ScarsI stepped by the waterfall,memories restless, awakenedfrom induced night slumber,drugged with bottle contentsuntil the pain of tears vanishedUntil the misery of wrought hands,twisted...
The Cost of BeliefEighteen thousand dollars a year,a Jesuit tuition fee.How much Mom believedI wasted now that I was an “atheist.”I tried finding Godeverywhere...
There is in the Water
What happened here the history I mean thismean thing there right there the bridgewhere they were lynched and who elsewas there and this is always here Ito make them mean something and howcan inanimate objects say...
occupier artclasswindow is crackedopen to let fresh air in. outsidesunny schoolyard under
lovely cloudless sky,the kind of blue beggingto be licked and torn asunderby hungry...
