Category: Poems

A.M.W.  1/7/1900–4/14/1993 My mother loved Elvis. Coming from Manhattan to Mashpee she’d pour a slug of Bailey’s Irish Cream and close the door to her room. Sounds of gospel rock and cigarette smoke let us know she’d settled in. My mother loved to dance but she married a man who loved gin rummy and schmoozing. …

I wish my mind were a Japanese room: light-filled, profound in its simplicity. Along its four walls, shelves of white oak with meticulous stacks of everything I ever knew arranged by times and subjects, open to the air, easily accessible. But my mind is a cavernous, old barn located in some remote place, filled with …

As the house got dark from our minds quiet as ever the walls had been we brought a body to a little town far from the south side of Chicago we laid him under trees and grass all my mother said was that if he knew he was laid to rest under the sun and …

I gave my guitar away— the one I used to strum in our living room, the one which you had once swung swiftly over my head. I gave it away. But the chords are still ringing, plucked gently in my head, the song stays the same. I bought a new one, and though I sleep …

Under the white coverlet now as then, the sweeping tide of sheets, the same cool turning, I dive, I tumble toward dreams. Memories run wild. Night must have released all its prisoners. My ghosts are younger now. Imagine that. I am older than my ghosts though the darlings retain a certain authority. I love this …

In shape, Back and breast From ear to ear In thought and manner We push, Men pull — A spine, divinely curved, Too straight & We break at the nerve.