Poetry |
“The Reader,” “A Snail,” “The Rabbits” & “Anniversary”
“As a child I ate rabbit, though I didn’t know it. My father / kept them in hutches along our high back fence. //. We fed them a bit, but mostly kept away — the mothers / would eat the babies if we bothered them too much, he told us.”
Poetry |
“Blue Oracle” & “We Forgot”
“I was born into violence, of word, / of body, but we did not speak of it outside our house. / We never spoke of it inside either. I didn’t know / what happened there happened elsewhere …”
Poetry |
“Poem In Which I Insist This Is A Good Day“
“The textile mills in my hometown / in Rhode Island are mostly dead. My parents are both dead. They wore / heart monitors with sticky tape and both took Coumadin / which thins the blood.”
Poetry |
“Imperial Virus (Scarab)”
“… He had affixed himself / to the side of my sandal like a brooch. / As I realized who he was, I could feel I was about // to be frightened: stopped myself.”
Poetry |
“Nothing So Beautiful” & “Under all there’s little difference”
“Yesterday, I had faith in the spindle / of an aspen / and the taut skin / of a flat blue sky / I knew the alphabet / rolling across the tongue / the way the wind knows far- / flung leaves”
Poetry |
“Nightly,” “Under a Cloudless Sky” & “Aubade with Selfies”
“If I think of a field of wheat in September, tawny and rippling, can I set it aflame? Will the fire kneel after it consumes every stalk?”
Poetry |
“Dear Mother VI” & “For the Tired Ones”
“It’s not that beautiful things must live. / But they look like the butterflies children draw, / & if we’re killing even beautiful things / what chance is there?”
Poetry |
“Right to Life” & “Burying Jews Since 1973”
“Look, it isn’t lonely here / any more than an idea is lonely // before it shows up (or not) in your mind. You know that feeling / when it half-exists? That’s the beauty of / The Void.”
Poetry |
“From the Body”
“we longed for wet darkness the aftermath / of burial and that fractioning of flesh / far in the circular currents of the earth”
Poetry |
“Self-Facing Ghazal” & “The Body is Nothing but Stories”
“Ochre, vermillion, and deep blue gashes / cohere in one of the truest records of a face // you knew best from dwelling in it, your gaze / focused for endless months on another’s face.”
Poetry |
“Constellations”
“On my back at the physical / therapist’s office I consider / why in the tiles overhead // the spray of holes / echoes a starfield photograph …”
Poetry |
“Divination” & “Linked”
“With one massive arm / she hugged the huge / brown ram around its chest / so its legs hung, / hooves grazing ground. // In the other hand, ungloved, / shears buzzed.”
Poetry |
“The Relics We Carry”
“The head of St. Catherine, the heart of St. Camillus, the tongue / of St. Anthony, the blood of St. Januarius. The relics we carry.”
Poetry |
“The Underworld” & “Mudman”
“I press on through the half-light, reaching // at last the crossing where she’s kept. Amber / light projects her number on the plinth. // Make no mistake. This is the one you seek …”
Poetry |
“Screenshot”
“My last few wisps of faith / are history, and sorry not sorry // I knew it was coming when / grown-ass adults gathered at dusk // in the cul-de-sac to break down / cardboard boxes.”