Poetry
Afternoon. Across the garden, in Green Hall, someone begins playing the old piano — a spontaneous piece, amateurish and alive, full of a simple, joyful melody. The music floats among us in the classroom. I …
Reconciliation Word over all, beautiful as the sky, Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost, That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash …
Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever …
Welcome to ESL 100, English Surely Latinized, inglés con chile y cilantro, English as American as Benito Juárez. Welcome, muchachos from Xochicalco, learn the language of dólares and dolores, of kings and queens, of Donald …
Spring: lovers hammering together their broken bed — So much work to do I begin by putting it off — Noticing everybody in the bar has missing teeth he leaves early — Next to the …
On Opening a Book of Photographs I look at them until I feel immune, a pile of bodies photographed by Lee Miller, nineteen forty-five, their strewn limbs, at first random, now obviously framed — four …
Acacias Strolling many years ago Down a street taken over by acacias in bloom I found out from a friend who knows everything That you had just gotten married. I told him that I really …
Homage to Rolf Jacobsen The yellow jacket keeps crashing against the pane trying to get out. All along it’s only a matter of opening the window, finding the words, and you’re out there — in …
He’s had chest pains for weeks, but doctors don’t make house calls to the North Pole, he’s let his Blue Cross lapse, blood tests make him faint, hospital gowns always flap open, waiting rooms upset …
O That Summer my sister and I both wound up back in Coos Bay, basket cases, lonely as hell. She was recovering from drugs and alcohol, I was newly divorced, a Sunday School teacher with …
For first he looks upon his fore-paws to see if they are clean. For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there. For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the fore paws extended. …
Song When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree: Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet; …