My little sister is beautiful.She has our father’s eyes, brown.Her mother’s skin—light, blinding. Something in her skin draws meand I look like a confused scribble,a...

Mid-Thirties Toddler, pigtails loosening,hides behind her mother’s legs,two tiny hands around one adult knee.Mother leans down,whispers in her daughter’s ear.Child smiles,tilts her head to one...

Sheltering in Place The desert wind outside my window howls.Tree branches, desiccated by the rainless winter,toss and rustle with eerily sibilant sounds.The wind itself moans...

Ariadne Awakens   She smoothed the creases in the bright blue sky, and when he arrived, there was barely time to clear the space between them...

Man Stands Outside the World Perched not so high,in squatty crouched gargoyleposition. Man stands outside the worldand I am that man. Rubbing a morning’s dewfrom gushing goldfingers. A...

A Sonnet for My Wife, the Surgeon From where do you draw so much strength each dayTo fight the fight of life and death despairWhen...

Billy G The snake circled the island, up the Hudson, down the Harlem,into the East, and around the point past Billy G’srent-controlled building on the...

Breathe I can’t breathe, said the fish who soon would dieI am a lie, sung the bird who could not flyI am the truth, said...

What’s Left of My Grandmother’s Signature In her room at Poet’s Walkher first name begins witha cursive J elegantlycompleting itself on the wall, resting in suspended...

The Night I Hear Sharon Olds Read Some rooms look dead from the outside.I eat late. I drink so much. Cold moon over an old drugstore...