Poetry |
“The Enigma of the Hour” and “Elegy for Rabbit”
“When you kneel I look down, / see the candle lit in your skull. / I kneel with you, but we haven’t a prayer.”
Poetry |
“Come Back!” and “To Bring You News”
“The sea level rises idealism falls / And ruthless ideologies abound / Put your head down / We have serious work to do”
Poetry |
“The Cardinal and His Song”
“I didn’t get a picture of the cardinal. / He crossed the street for another tree. Wait, // there’s something missing in this story.”
Poetry |
“Problems of Moon Language” and “Libra”
“Through nightmare, I can’t / stay calm, can’t trust that / whatever ending may come / will not be my end: and if mine, // who am I to deflect it from my body …”
Poetry |
“Someone called looking for me” and “It would be nice to see each other again”
“Suddenly I thought of the house on the port, / of the bee swarm besieging the terrace / and of you not calling for too long a time.”
Poetry |
“It’s Eerie” and “My Fatalities”
“Again, I hear that stream humming up / against those dark, cool hours called wedding night. / The river folds farther and farther away, / though its descent / is soft as an old kitchen cloth …”
Poetry |
“Renvyle: Night Collage Seven” and “Salt Meadow”
“After the winter storm departed / we found the gunwale of a wooden boat / washed up in our garden, and from somewhere, / decades ago, my mother’s voice reciting: Where / did you come from, baby dear?”
Poetry |
“What do you need to know?” and “Wallpaper”
“The junkyard littered its way across / acres of oily sand and scrub, an engine coupled to a birch, / a hammer tied by grass.”
Poetry |
“The Enchanted Bells”
“He tested the timbre of the bells / The vendor had wrapped for him. / The headlines were no better / Than the ones at home.”
Poetry |
“Against the Wind” and “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”
“In some daydreams I know my dad / enough to commit him to the VA / or to a converted storage container / spruced for aging veterans by kindly, / enterprising undergrads.”
Poetry |
“Puzzle Map”
“Made a kind of sense, her country / for her grandson to hold on his lap, turn upside down, / shake if he pressed the states down tight.”
Poetry |
“Say Your Mother Returned From Death”
“Or maybe she’s been hanging out on Willie Nelson’s / tour bus all this time, drinking coffee and sucking in / second hand weed because someone just gave him // a new bong to try out”
Poetry |
“The Holy Embraces the Holy”
“The chaplain was Muslim, Ali, // and the patient was not that kind of Texan. / ‘If only more Muslims were this nice, / the world would be a better place,’ / the transplanted lone-star said to me. // Leaning against the wall, hands behind my back, / I nodded in cold agreement.”
Poetry |
“Even Birds Leave the World” and “My Cloak of Not Knowing”
” … I knew I could spend / a lifetime not knowing how sorrow had become my second skin, / and that no matter how far I traveled, the sky would be the same / though disguised by different weathers.”