Poetry
—for Poff We settled to great small talk on the back porch Despite green skies and scratchy radio warnings; The beer was cold and the rain came down in sheets To simmer a stew in …
To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour. A robin redbreast in a cage …
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead I played about the front gate, pulling flowers. You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse, You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums. …
from Musica Humana I am reading aloud the book of my life on earth and confess, I loved grapefruit. In a kitchen: sausages; tasting vodka, the men raise their cups. A boy in a white …
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light; The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in …
On such occasions one comes to know someone spectacularly fast. Even with your unfriendly arm at my throat you could hide nothing from me. Your failures with women, for instance, filed through my mind. And …
When I saw her, or rather the last time I saw her, I was living on a screen porch in the back of a dilapidated house, one of those houses that makes you feel good …
Six Poems by Maram Al-Massri You must have forgotten your papers and returned to retrieve them. Or a friend must have called and begun to chatter as you were about to leave. Or you must …
I like my own poems best. I quote from them from time to time saying, “A poet once said,” and then follow up with a line or two from one of my own poems appropriate …
The HoleA string of notes — A string of words could be a worm or a needle passing in and out through some hole — stitching what to what? I imagine myself passing among your …
I was just turned twenty-one, And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-school superintendent, Made a speech in Bindle’s Opera House. “The honor of the flag must be upheld,” he said, “Whether it be assailed by a barbarous …
So it was with the suitcase left in front of the hotel — cinched, broken-locked, papered with world ports, carrying what mattered until then, when turning your back to cup a match it was taken, …
‘Is my team ploughing, That I was used to drive And hear the harness jingle When I was man alive?’ Ay, the horses trample, The harness jingles now; No change though you lie under The …
What Makes the Grizzlies Dance June and finally snow peas sweeten the Mission Valley. High behind numinous meadows ladybugs swarm, like huge lacquered fans from Hong Kong, like serrated skirts of blown poppies, whole mountains …
When You Are Old When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had …
Where Children Live Homes where children live exude a pleasant rumpledness, like a bed made by a child, or a yard littered with balloons. To be a child again one would need to shed details …