Poetry |
“Saint Andre”
“That feeling of those cruel slaps // to the wrists and hands / by the elder nuns, // their black bad habits in Catechism / Class …”
Poetry |
“Farmer / Videogame” & “Translator (Delivery Truck Driver)”
“I was ashamed / to need my co-worker Adam’s // help lifting cab from chassis. First / the transmission fluid flowed / dark red. Then the gaskets // blew …”
Poetry |
“Common Ground,” “Eating Greenland” & “Thirst”
“I thought I was finished with beauty, / having shed — given away, or sold — so much / and committed myself // to necessary objects only.”
Poetry |
“Arrival Day” & “The Future”
“Here is / the bridge // they said / they’d burn // when they / got to it …
Poetry |
“Redwood”
“… and in ten million or so years / I might reach a tablet / inscribed with the poems of Enheduana; / and in another stretch / a bark-cliff-edge leading inside the mind / of Dante.”
Poetry |
“Mother As Bird” & “Red Tricycle”
“Reflections of clouds and trees / shone on its silver handlebars but only for a moment / before they’d slide away …”
Poetry |
“The Cryptid” & “The Loons”
“Drinks blood thinking it wine, / drinks wine thinking it dreams. / Its eyes are tattooed globes. / The cryptid sees through a thousand eyes hidden by fur.”
Poetry |
“Her Turquoise Eye Shadow” & “Poem”
“Nothing was open at the airport / all fifteen or so people / early to their flights / just kinda looked through / the slats to the combination / gift shop Dunkin Donuts.”
Poetry |
The Poets of Martha’s Vineyard, part II
“There is warmth in the flash / of his smile. I am Syrian, he tells me. It is all one country, Lebanon, Syria, / Jordan except for those damned Turks, / it would still be one country.”
Poetry |
“Everything Else Can Wait”
“No perfect couple / right off the cake. / No swollen uncontested // years, wings bent / and tattered by the cat.”
Poetry |
“The Heart of Humanity” & “The Perils of Not Dreaming”
“Why are the unwaveringly humane / harder to find than those in stasis on a boulder / with eyes unblinking?”
Poetry |
“Prognosis” & “Yearbook”
“It doesn’t seem fair that we only get one / for what are probably some / of the worst / years of our lives.”
Poetry |
“Of Cypresses”
“Jagged stone walls look as if ravaged by storms, / though the cypresses remain upright. // I must begin again to say what I see / and not use the rotted names.”
Poetry |
“Texas Roaches” & “Inventions”
“What’s dis for? the child inquires, holding out a pair of red tweezers. / The next day, running barefoot through a sprinkler’s spray, a sharp / splinter in her foot supplies the answer, and I try not to look away”
Poetry |
“Self-Portrait as a Vermeer Painting” & “Self Portrait as an O’Keeffe Flower”
“I was never what the critics proclaimed — / they never touched the core of me, those smug / assumptions …”