There’s no looking back. Looking back has been removed as an option. […]

My mother sits befuddled at her telephone, uncertain who she means to […]

Among the dead in a stranger’s plowed field, I stand alone with […]

all the armor plates cannot protect you, eremite the way you burrow […]

It is January. It rises up out of the ice and puts […]

There’s a picture draped behind each face. Huge black light posters, in […]

The birders lie dressed in their beds, gravely waiting. Soon, they will […]

Llamas dot the hills. White rugs on a green rug. You never […]

In the Yard today, the pine needles began snowing down. The way […]

Color of J.C. Penney’s jewelry, trinket in a Cracker Jack box, color […]

I don’t trust you if you haven’t gone to Folsom when the […]

The maple leaves are as big as my face. If I was […]

After the Vision Fire, November 1995 You kicked at the campfire, went […]

Black knife, black wish, the thing comes over the canyon wall a […]

They show no signs of finding the food, though I’ve left it […]

In 1887 the Army Benevolent Fund decided to charge rent to veterans […]

Of course you invited them in: faces painted like trick-or-treaters, carrying pointy […]

In the past, I’m told, men pushed their heavy furnishings to the […]

The barbed wire fence stripped the boy’s body like an apple peeler […]

We could have lived anywhere, strung light and power around a tree. […]

The sidewalk split open to reveal the dirt underneath it, the sky […]

— A film by Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1992 Excerpts from Marguerite Duras The […]

No entry, no door, no clean line around the drifts that twist […]

Mother willed me a box of ashes from her burnt house. Maybe […]

In the Hotel Devotion there is no running water, no power, no […]

Her mind, in its dying, grows into a version of who she […]

the only place left to shave is inside your ears you are […]

The article said it helps to look for one thing, as a […]

Coma of ice and dust, sublimated Accidental star of Bethlehem, your Streaked […]

The twilight smells like moths. Moths and libraries and children’s breath preserved […]

This from those who drove out to see the others drive their […]

Together, twenty and I keep the kingdom in our midst at bay […]

A seraph flings the window wide and the walls, like two moth […]

My father’s body has become a crippled shrine, a complex-compound formula misfiring. […]

Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is […]

I half expected to find your name, Dad, the obit telling, like […]

I dreamt that a plane crash burned your body, that the ocean […]

First a spark, then flames of floral consensus. We’re a patch on […]

Fallen from focus, streetlamps turn to faint plots. Anything we ever said […]

More people are killed by falling coconuts than by sharks. Creationists tell […]

For the 141 in the Triangle Waist Shirt Factory, Union Square, 1911 […]

“We have seen that the members of the same class, independently of […]

Her hair shining in afternoon light, a lower register in a voice […]

In various suites the newlyweds carom and — slapdash — suck, hum, […]

Nothing else in the swamp rises beyond the surprise of you and […]

Come, love, undress me anyway, let your fingers fly to my ruddy […]

Again the old heart returns with its old heat, that old alertness […]

What of the altar’s fire, burnt through flesh, now licking the bone? […]

As a sycamore on 104th makes plastic bags fettered to limbs into […]

They strung up the clowns Because it was already a circus. Because […]

Already what I knew to be true is all tenses: has changed, […]

The main plotlines are never important. As in Shakespeare, it’s merely the […]

A lost voice gets in the cereal box, eats the oats. Six […]

There, just in front of the jetty, a boy had drowned after […]

Who could help it — chalked hop-scotch on the sidewalk, don’t we […]

Stop the car. There. Now breathe with me. That broken Ford needs […]

Our napkins have sailed lap to lip, lie stained with the same […]

And she will slap me & slam out of this story. Another […]

There go the dead leaves, there go the sticks. She is rushing, […]

As the story goes, the raven’s wings aren’t black. They’re waves, capping […]

Suppose I’ll go then to the hardware store where they still hang […]

— for Nathan McClain Another day in the cloak and dagger biz, […]

All gospels spell it out the same way. In the beginning, there […]

What do you do during communion? Sit on your hands. Count each […]

— Flatey, Iceland Remember that twisty gravel two-track that crunched under our […]

Last night I dreamed you lost as an old shoe lying, strings […]

Let’s undress & let our bodies float above us. The moon is […]

I. The wind throws bones before she rises: the boiled, the worried, […]

The stores ran out of butter every day. So you ran out, […]

Already the panic has begun. The questions: Who will crash? What will […]

I know spring by the hawk pinning down songbirds in my neighbor’s […]

We examine the ratios of spheres: Pluto an atom next to the […]

To move is to experience pain. To turn the head, impossible. The […]

— for Hart Crane’s mother To coax out your spirit I left […]

I’m thinking of living forever. I think that way I might finally […]

Had you been able to see your mother when she was young […]

— for my father In this city whose name you can’t pronounce […]

Everything we see hides another thing; we always want to see what […]

No longer can I just climb through—the time Is past for going […]

Fog this morning. Thick. And loving the thick bodies of live oaks, […]

My father’s heart is a little red car he parks in the […]

“… she sent spectres, ruled the ghosts, and carried into effect the […]

Giant salamanders, blue-black and purple-black, lie along the bottom of this stream […]

— for Ernie Mulford I was told you were buried on the […]

They hump like grunts in a long line down out of the […]

You start in the garden. I start in the fruit. In the […]

for Celine Dion I tell you about the little heart that beats […]

Is this how the gods see us? Lusty, tangle- Maned mustangs shifting […]

Sometimes at breakfast a face or two: a magazine I took from […]

A small man is surrounded by only great, expansive land — forever […]

Wednesday’s garbage. Swearing off the good stuff. Watching early-birds rile a mist […]

infest the arbor: three neat shafts evenly spaced in the last rafter. […]

yr bread. We can be prison food, happily. And if hungry is […]

Maybe it was enough to believe the Zodiac’s blazing entirety would be […]

with a line borrowed from Nellie Sachs If I could, I would […]

Halogen bleaches night’s black fabric, whitewashes the dust. Redeyes jet the milk […]

Red would want to walk along Fisherman’s Wharf and recall the first […]

I keep a note a friend left in a book of photos: […]

This flatness is a sickness. But this sickness can be cured with […]

Call yourself crazy, but these swallows in the eaves speak of arriving, […]

The first step: picture a field. Panting heaps of grass. Clouds: thumb […]

“The voice is more than the body’s excursus, its way of going […]

We heard the fish there cursive through the coral, That starfish prowl […]

Though the mechanics have picketed, the flights go off as planned. What […]

The steam, a too-early, wet-haired winter morning. They had shot off the […]

thank god they see me. the water is getting in at private […]

An inmate at the Winnebago County Jail escaped for a number of […]

Because we’re looking for the Seven Sisters, that’s why we’re here, embedded […]

The buzz comes from the baseline and the rubble border to the […]

i. Because old novels are always furnished — red velvet and larkspur. […]

Now a certain young man followed Him, having a linen cloth thrown […]

Something happened in here that I can’t quite write about A front […]

The farmer, husband to my French teacher and friend to my mother, […]

When we were children we wanted to be orphans. The snow came […]

Asleep on the roof when rain comes, water collects in the dips […]

I was working the knots out from a yard of my wife’s […]

Our father and I are down on our knees side by side, […]

Like guillotines, every lesson from childhood taught me about precision and punishment. […]

I can’t help but see the first few crocuses that will somehow […]

After raping Philomela, Tereus “seized her tongue with tongs and, with his […]

My Grandpa Evo had a special fork whose tines bent out wide […]

Now we begin to introduce Mr. James Montgomery of Newton, Mass., to […]

He’d been a tourist in churches, there for a look at the […]

Here comes the finch out of the mine. Well, almost. In the […]

In rain, the smell of pine and old cement returns to me, […]

I used to love dirt. I’d dig first, then bury — candy […]

That for a winter’s share of months — which felt then to […]

— for Jess It’s too easy to be the ancient Chinese poet […]

You swim to the next cove, the only act of leaving you […]

— a Chorus of Old Folk We have a mind for expert […]

In my dream about death, I come upon a hill, silhouetted, and […]

As surely as architects fall in love with angles and lines I […]

I have taken up residence in the bear’s black body; the bear’s […]

how can i tell you what i have to if you can’t […]

Past houses, past pickers and bone-cleaners, rats and carrion birds, alley cats […]

Better days are the ones misspent as this where instead of what […]

I don’t believe in beauty: my lover beside me beautiful: my father […]

— after Robert Bly I felt the roof of my head break […]

— In Memory of LMG This rapt, bandit-eyed mother, scorpion-diner and foe […]

To pick that glint-edged glamour, lacquered body, lustrous odalisque, strung flower. Imagine […]

After the burial, when we broke down the estate into child’s portions, […]

We spliced genes from different species to create the ultimate killer. I’m […]

I promise him bitterness, salt, the tastes of all my dead, gold […]

— Wenatchee National Forest Our bodies are lower than the nettles. Our […]

turned up like an artifact of our early days, the time one […]

It’s been ten years since I first read those ancient books. Ten […]

It wakes him up — the glow of his shirt hanging in […]

All night the willow sweeps, but the creek never runs any cleaner: […]

After I’m got, I never want to get. They hit the buzzer, […]

This is not your death. From under a plastic surgical cap you […]

I took my place among the men and lessoned to their conversation […]

All those who can have turned their windows dark. Nobody wants to […]

Say Volvo, say gearshift and straddle, say we rubbed to plums our […]

My skin crinkles like cellophane. It disintegrates in the sun. There is […]

Famed musician Jelly Roll Morton got his start playing the piano in […]

Though there’s no boat the rain waits among the waves the way […]

Little pig. You hug the ground, wide nostrils chasing down some phantom […]

While playing tennis, I never think of death. Instead, I notice the […]

After, we sprawl. Our arms looped, my foot against your calf, your […]

Often I wonder what happened to lost buttons as well as husbands. […]

Sit. You’re making too much noise. Bad boy. Think about it: what’s […]

Standing in this current, trying to thread a 4X tippet through the […]

A set of twins is born a sort of pun, By wit […]

— after the letters of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell Cherry blossoms […]

Mother he is A gentleman of honor he is A builder of […]

A woman’s face in the wood-grain — in the dust — of […]

Not that the dead care what day we remember, if we touch […]

Like ushers, telephone-wire crows convene slowly. Night’s a book of hours into […]

The question is, of course, how could one not Think of Romeo […]

So many automobiles. It must be Friday night. These are the golden […]

If enough of us could land among the rest. If this reflected […]

You joined me, last night, in the bargaining bed, in the deep […]

It must be a day in winter in the painting where the […]

In the morning I will teach you once again to play a […]

Say sepulcher and then we will make love — our body’s balance […]

When I wanted you bird, you bared. Unzipped and high, you grasped […]

Another house fire. Another ruined suit. Another pile of ash. Another day […]

1. You came to put up with the buxom peonies Helga kept […]

My eyes read my eyelids when I dream the long straight ache […]

We curled in the dark gymnasium corner, breath making plumes of the […]

When your bed is too well-made to be any kind of invitation, […]

I’m usually very miserable, so I buy a fur coat every year. — […]

Steaming, longer boys would grab our trunks and yank them down to […]

August, near the First Dear Madame — I address you with a […]

After Carolyn Forché New Orleans, Louisiana August, 2005 What you have seen […]

I held my breath a long time before I let the drowning […]

Most animals will disguise a wound. Not you. When I undressed you […]

The lucky girls do not have to remember their bodies. They walk […]

Near the end, even asleep, you held a book of Bruegel’s paintings, […]

In the morning there are waddling clouds & the neighborhood women come […]

And this is how we danced: with our mothers’ white dresses spilling […]

about Pakistan, my son asks about microprocessors and sex, he asks about […]

People came to him—in the streets, in the alleys. Always, his appetite […]