Poetry |
“You Thrill Me So” & “Art”
“A speaker at the memorial for my friend Miles is saying / that when his wife died eleven years earlier, Miles never /got over it, which reminds me of a letter in the advice / column of today’s paper …”
Poetry |
“Suite for Alice”
“Oh my old friend now gone your fierceness is not abstract / It’s a matchless voice a calling out saying / I am here forever in the poems and damn you who think otherwise the nerve / You tyrants buried in my curse”
Poetry |
“Waiting for a Girl Like You”
“three hurricanes blew through no one / at the beach I waded ankle / deep glanced out to sea / a white fin parallel to keep me company”
Poetry |
“To Virginia, Lucia & Sylvia”
“With all my education — / my shelves and shelves of books, // my two degrees, I shrank into oblivion / as he lied and hid my pathology / report from me.”
Poetry |
“What is this fierce light”
“The past stretched over the field / impenetrable // I didn’t know others would be going so soon”
Poetry |
“Grandsons alongside, Grandfather trundles …,” “Those children hop …” & “Skipping to school …”
“Skipping to school. Skipping / school. Skipping stones across // water. Skipping stones altogether.”
Poetry |
“This Book Belongs To”
“This prairie town shunned outsiders, kept dirt local: / Divorce, two suicides, abandonment, / unspoken scandal of a pregnant woman’s fall …”
Poetry |
“The Oracular Mirror” & “In the Mountains”
“the minority / which is not a minority / mail messages / to themselves // in preparation / (dying?) / of the field / of action —”
Poetry |
“In These My Lear Years”
“Lear, / It’s ok. / You have your way / Of doing / This senescence, / I have mine.”
Poetry |
“A Multi-Stemmed Deciduous Shrub of Great Beauty When in Bloom,” “The Art of the Novel” & The History of Music”
“It wasn’t clear / how long the muses / dressed as lunch ladies / kept the place open // The room got dark / though the sun was still out / I went home to think about it”
Poetry |
“Viola pedata (Birdsfoot Violet)”
“Magnified thirty-five times, / the birdsfoot ovary / appears to blossom inward, / three groups of petals / in pale green glass.”
Poetry |
“I Love Wonder Bread in This Poem” & “Missing Soul Report”
“Because I am a teenager in it. And because the 21st century has not begun to outrage me yet. / And because I am somewhat like a teapot in my bell-bottoms at this time.”
Poetry |
“The Rains of Ljubljana”
“Schnapps and blueberry juice in glistening tulip glasses / to greet us as we step from the deluge. // Ljubljana, because of the music of its name. / And because I’d once heard Tomaž Šalamun read.”
Poetry |
“September Ars Poetica”
“In Gaelic, fox is sionnach, or madra rua / (red dog), rain-beaded, skinny; a fox / querying for food, pantomiming / with his paws something indecipherable.”
Poetry |
“Suspect Routes” & “Explain the Heart”
“… Frigid abode / where spurned fools pour gasoline on embers, / feeding unspoken thoughts to their remorse.”