Midmorning Break My mother had ten. We dartedin and out from under her wings.She smoked cigarettes and dranktea that had cooled — a sip and...

What Joan and Marie tell me After “Merci” (oil on canvas, 1992), one of Joan Mitchell’s latest works before she succumbed to cancer in October...

Street Scene Early evening heat rises frompavements, from cement and asphalt,carrying a scent slightly sour,slightly acrid—oily and tar-like. Outside the café, beyond its fenced-intables, a large...

You Ask Me About America’s Future I remember this –I was a child clutching the string of a green balloonShivering next to classmatesOn a blustery...

stars melt in your skin for R.M quiet nights held inside your hands like water waitingfor the chance to become your ladder. you first reminisced, as if...

Coaling the Furnace Am I such a romantic to believethat the coaling of the furnacewas a job my parents enjoyed sharingbefore it was exchanged for...

Nativity Blues at the Border The world was dark. Very dark. Political tensions were high.He thought maybe a star. A very bright star. Could end...

Between(triple haiku) I must grow leanerWith thought and age: from wine toWater, beef to broth. Between here and there,Should a man of decline choosePrayer over repair? When...

Section/Grave/Block, Flushing NY “Charon, the ferryman of the dead, his hand on the boat-pole, calls me now: ‘Why are you tarrying? Make haste, you hinder...

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...