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.”
Poetry |
“The Window / Nine Attempts”
“Then all day it shifts and lengthens, pools and stops short, pours itself out, / ripples like water over shoals, // like your fingertip / tracing down my keel. // I mean breastbone.”
Poetry |
“Long Exposure”
“Love what you’ve never seen: encircling sphere / of icy shards beyond the heliopause, / too small, too faint, too far to be much more // than theoretical.”
Poetry |
“The transmigration of souls in the donut shop”
“The baker is making a mobius strip of lemon cream. It darts through the crowd. / The ballooning heart of the construction worker is being sawed in two / by the manager.”
Poetry |
from On Dangerous Ground: Film Noir Poems
“Poetry and film noir both often rely on set formats, manipulate narrative coherency, and proceed by implication. As for the doomed film noir protagonist, it is not unusual for him, and it is usually him, to have the temperament of a thwarted poet …”
Poetry |
“The Known Consequence of Living” & “Defining or Defying Gravity”
“In the hierarchy of all I don’t know / about the world, invisible force / is in the upper echelons. / I should have leaned harder / into geology or biology / or archeology for rocks / & blood & bones to touch.?