Category: Poem

Don’t fall, don’t cry, and please don’t worry the evening meal flavors the great domain rain hammers at the glass, sparks in the stove little boy can taste the delicacies of evening. School is done for the day, homework will come then sleep in the cozy down bed, close to the door almost to ensure …

So it has been, so it will be. The ancient hag and the child crouch under the thorny acacia tree, with the show soon to begin the men from a distance safe, gather on the crest of the hill. Down below, with a thorn, and the delicate dried gut of a gnarled rat, she stitches …

How beautiful you look, my darling, In whose glass I see the Best parts of me. Ah, to drink the image with a Draught And feel whole. Now she’s practiced in the Art of dying. Less of her shall there be to be Seen, A wine of misery. I love you in your old age, …

O my love, where are they, where are they going The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles. I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder. –Czeslaw Milosz Carrying water to the late lilies from Easter, their flowers no more than fingers of pearls, whitely thin and on display, Ribih and …

We grew up, you and I, washed in the blood, two hearts strangely warmed, tuned to the tenets of four-part harmony, and timed to the cadence of an American karma. I walked the aisle, born again and again, reincarnation with a black leather Bible. Hurdy-gurdy hymns and clammy thighs on pews, the unmystic soundtrack for …

Sudden thunder breaks the cat runs— A tiny Steady rain Is still wet— On the broad leaves The sunflower leans into Rain as subtle As a gray cat Among sunflowers— At dusk The sunflowers bend toward dawn

I wake & the universe knows itself, carbon, calcium, flesh, bone & brain peering from the bed at its hydrogen burning

Big Mama says when she brings out the food, everybody’s gonna run to the table and grab a plate. And those heavy-handed ones will be first in line. They’ll get so much food till their plates run over and then they’ll come back for a take home plate. And they are always the ones who …

On August 23, 2021, I lost my friend and editor Tom Flynn, a great man among men and women. His death was sudden, unexpected, and far earlier than its due time. Seven days later, I lost my beloved wife, Marie. Her death was not sudden. It was expected, even overdue. Death unhurriedly arrived at our …

Two letters came the other day. Mama opened and read the first one with a smile and slipped it back into the envelope. She read the second one out loud: Your rent is long overdue. Either you pay within five business days or vacate the premises, the rent lady wrote. One week later we were …

In memory of Tom Flynn 1. shadows … shadowing … Tom Flynn … to the dark 2. shadows … shadowing … Tom Flynn … shadowing … in the dark 3. shadows … shadowing … Tom Flynn

time seemingly so much time yet not for us only so much time for us and then it ends … life seemingly so much life yet not for us only so much life for us and then it ends … love seemingly so much love yet not for us only so much love for us …

For Tom Flynn I saw you more than once loaded with papers & slides, & pictured what was on the inside, like a piñata, jumble of rational treasures that tumble out now, scattered thought, measures of logical light you continue to spill, far beyond fools’ empty fields & death’s visionless night.

For Tom Flynn How can I believe you’re dead? It’s only something someone said. Would you leave us here to grieve, when you could give the lie to, instead? Perhaps yet live & not let go, for we do remember so— remember then, remember when, at last though remember best, were you here again.

While we await our Sybil and she denies us entrance Demanding the bough of a tree which in our youth Cried out to us—the one of many looked upon— And when received she shows us in Anchises lures us with the dream we dream at dawn Though he was sworn to secrecy, he welcomes us …

The human heart cannot love; it is the mind that learns to move. The sun does not really set; we simply turn away from it. The sky may blaze a deep azure, but only to one standing here. We wish upon a falling star, a piece of dusty meteor. A child may be invincible; a …

Scott Joplin died in a mental institution the year my father was born in Toronto, the final card in his parents’ hand, almost enough for a game of gin. King of ragtime, Joplin suffered a breakdown when his opus work, “Treemonisha,” met with no success. Another genius depressive, Rachmaninoff, felt stifled by being asked to …

Dear Andrew … we went to the Rodin Museum today. You, me, and Alice. First, we had brunch—a lovely brunch, outside, easy conversation, “get to know you” conversation, still, “the mother is visiting and I’m meeting her” conversation. You were lovely, contained, warm, engaged, funny. And then we went to the Rodin Museum. It wasn’t …

                          Defendit numerus   Though we cannot be sure how Archimedes died, it’s rarely debated:a Roman soldier cast a shadow on the old man’s sand diagram andwhen he asked the soldier to move, the latter ran him through with a sword. Or the …

1. nothing … nothing ever … swear to god … nothing … nothing ever 2. & nothing … & nothing ever … & pray to gods … & nothing … & nothing ever 3. nothing … ever … & … nothing

At first she was alone with wings for hoppingAnd friendsEach had a branch in the tree Then she was starving, she and the othersCrowding the treeAnd grew wings for flying Swarming up with wings bigger than bodyFriend is enemyAll are hungry From above imagining silk in seeds of milletIf soil is dirtThe meal is sweet …

Sometimes I leave conversations, saymy mother is calling—although I have no mother—muscle memory of a lie that I have never quite been able to leave behind. It’sthe tap of a doctor’s hammer on my knee. Excuse meone moment, my mother’s calling. The phone not even ringing, just held limp in my hand.The way her hand …

an empty cicada shell12 feet aboveclinging to the tree bark like a velcro hook despite the windy rainfallthere is no movementa carefully chosen timeshare for the month in the spring, a girl climbscurious fingersfind another exoskeleton to keep among coins and beadsher forgotten collectionin a box.

The White House ceremony: THE CORONATION OF THE PRESIDENT. Televised, no audio. The cello— Discordant. MYSELF: It happened. It happened here. It happened in our own time. FEMALE: Shame. CHORUS: It happened. It happened here. It happened in our own time. FEMALE: Shame. The cello— Discordant. MYSELF: You let it happen. You let it happen …

I say hello You smile and wave You come sit with me and we chat You tell me about the new things in your room The crafts that you’ve made The new people you’ve met And the whole time you’re talking I look around at the people with similar smiles And realize, like them, you …

Leaden days, stratus clouds gauze the sky. A sphere of hot plasma thaws the sky. Belief is a phase, I said and shrugged. Sans intervention, what could cause the sky? Constellatory creatures lure the gaze. When ursa shows up, canus paws the sky. July and October fall in love, wed. When crab appears, scorpion claws …

What is the secret of such inwardness? She’s disappeared into herself again skating across the ice of consciousness her movements indistinguishable from pain. Is this my mother or the Virgin Mary? I do not recognize this pious poise seated at the bed’s edge, solitary, indifferent to the tenor of my voice. She mumbles in an …

The swifts flock, swooping clouds, And string together on telephone wires. White breasts, black wings: they fly At the time of leaving when leaves turn, And they turn southwards and cry. The egrets assemble on the mill pond, On overhanging branches in twilight. White necks, black knees: they soar When the time comes, above trees, …

The clematis vines into its top knot of magenta, each petal as bold as the arm of a starfish. My child, his attention unfixed, strokes the white keys of the piano as his violin teacher opens the hutch to feed Attila the Bun. The mimosa flowers in the garden color the air like the notes …

1. “Kiss me, once,” she said. … I kiss her, once. … “Kiss me twice,” she said. … I kiss her twice. … “Kiss me, once again,” she said. … I kiss her, once again. 2. “Miss me, once,” she said. … I miss her, once. … “Miss me twice,” she said. … I miss …

Had I known I’d find my way into this full-blown love, might I have creased my brow less? The boy with his violin, the daughter with her social ease, the husband plotting out the design of Mexican tiles across the floor. In this little house, where the wooden stairs creak and he must sometimes duck …

1. “Write a love poem,” she said. … “Only if you write one, too,” I said … She writes a love poem. … I read her love poem. … I write my love poem. … She reads my love poem. 2. “Write a last love poem,” she said. … “Only if you write a last …

He handed me a small object the shape of a brick, but smaller. It could have been a box, I don’t know. It was heavy. I asked him, “Is the sadness in it?” “Is it closed?” “Will it leak?” He looked back at me, steadily, attentively. But he said nothing.

Would it be more polite to return the loan of tulips before their life of bloom waned? or would it show an apter appreciation of the favor to enjoy them to the end? While I was debating this question and putting one or another of them into the compost, the pink-and-white tulip made certain yellow …

We think it is new. We are so, so afraid. We think there has never been, ever been, a thing like our thing. So, we are so afraid. Just think. A village rapes a girl. A village burns a man. Here is the maelstrom. Here is the horror. People we like are like people we …

When we started we used only the most beautiful words. We looked them up. We strung them together. Then we read about minimalism and simplicity. And getting to the point. And stripping words away like adjectives and adverbs. Wanting to reveal what was underneath. “To tell the truth,” they said. “That is the goal, and …

I found a maple branch on the ground after a windstorm, bearing growths of lichens varying in appearance: one coating the length of the branch like a skin treatment, another like moss with gray berries, and a third like lettuce unfurling its leaves. Apparently, they live off the air and their growth is a sign …

I wish I could say I was seated at my desk behind a stack of papers so preternaturally smart my red pen hadn’t moved                                           or I was lost in a poem by Kenneth Patchen, …

But for the guard I would have docked in America and killed myself there. Here, I am closer to Paris. The last of the Europeans, what would I have done in New York, an exhibit in the classroom cage of The New School? Mourned the library I left behind? Choked among the bourgeois working class? …

One Sunday night at home all alone in the century just before this one I read in the Tribune‘s science section the universe is endless, here forever, but the earth will be destroyed, whether by burning or freezing I don’t remember, and I felt so alone I had to call you and you were home alone too, and …