Poetry |
“Hyperemesis Gravidarum” and “While I Was Out”
“… never saw the contours / of the larval life form waxing in your womb, / a pitiable spineless lone crescent sardine / of a half-written girl …”
Poetry |
from the “Little Soul” series
“Little Soul has no ancestral memory / but knows, thanks to MyHeritage, its DNA / is pure Ashkenazi, a lineage of wanderers / and damp wool, shtetls, ghettos …”
Poetry |
“The May Poets” & “Wigilia (Christmas Eve) on East Meadow in Dublin”
“The February poets wished they were flyers. They loved saying ‘Sopwith-Camel.’ / They all agreed that a Zeppelin was more beautiful than the Apollo Belvedere. / They were often shot in the back as they looked up at the sky.”
Poetry |
“When Year After Year I Receive an Evite to A Party Where I Know No One, Not Even the Host” and “Abecedarian”
“Could have been the folk masses, the relentless brown plaid, / detention for every day late, that made me start the group against / enlightenment …’
Poetry |
“home,” “dreaming language,” “king matjaž visits his village” & “talking with thistles”
“but don’t come too close! / my lines have hooks / that will crudely catch your ears / with spiky words and stalks …”
Poetry |
“Three Months Before My Mother Died We Went to Dollywood,” “At Home” & “Fourteen Mondays”
“The picture we used for the obituary / was one I took across the table at the restaurant / where she took me for my birthday. / It burned down the winter after she died.”
Poetry |
“Recipes, Logistics,” “Divine Mushroom,” “Saucer and Cup,” “Giant Black Bear” & “Encores”
“… things that are true in their own rights, springing up after rains, and have no need of my understanding to complete them, nor have they any use for appraisals of their worth …”
Poetry |
“But maybe …” “So it’s said …” “For a long time …” “Line like …” “Deep inside …” & “Behind the lips …”
“Behind the lips / the unutterable waits / tears at the umbilical cords / of words // the martyr’s death of the alphabet / in the mouth’s urn / spiritual ascension / out of searing pain –“
Poetry |
“Late Work in Early Winter”
“I felled an ash yesterday that dropped / in the stream below the house with a thud / my neighbor heard from across his field where he / was digging postholes for a fence …”
Poetry |
“Tea With Yak Milk”
“Just a cold / morning and a small group of men // except me // and maybe the body they carefully place / on bare rock …”
Poetry |
“Bridge/Insurrection,” “On Sundays They Shoot at Nothing” & “Ideas”
“I wanted to howl. Maybe I wanted to kill but I knew where the fences were. I licked salt from the rails, swished my tail, ruminated.”
Poetry |
“My Lost Generation”
“The last onionskin, Wite-Out, / and carbon paper led to the last of Miss Rossiter, // said to be reading palms in LA.”
Poetry |
“Girl Walking Uphill in Darkness (Nine Inquiries)” and “Abysmal Zone”
“if every morning I move the complete contents of one drawer to another drawer / if every day full / becomes empty / do I need a lock / do I need to tell someone / the combination …”
Poetry |
“Holocene”
“I thumbed through a picture book / called Deep Time whose first / blank page it said was outer space / before anything existed / to be the outer of …”
Poetry |
“the place” and “the judge”
“tell me the lights existed. / tell me that you still breathe the smoke of a thousand cigarettes. / tell me that there is a cold droplet dripping down / the necks of all Augusts.”