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 […]
There’s a beach in San Diego where you can drop your clothes […]
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 […]
I am a veritable fontof metal knowledge though I’m sure a certain […]
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 […]
When the caseworker opened the file and said, this will be difficult, […]
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 […]
Look at this man at his window all agog at the mortal […]
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. […]
Ida Lewin (1906-1938) AlwaysWinter, Poland My mind grew quiet like a house […]
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 […]
Even a week later the hand is clear sitting in the leaves […]
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 […]
I passed through the small hills of my mother’s hips one cold […]
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 […]
Hour Seventy Two: In Which the Witch Describeth Her God The rim […]
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 […]
If the moon comes out bearing nicks and bite marks, you’ll find […]
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 […]
My dropout brother swears a mouthful of freon at the pressure gauge […]
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, […]
World gets chance to name new 7 wonders What are the new […]
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? […]
The failing kidney is a portal — the leaky heart valve, the […]
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 […]
Suppose everything depends on being loved by the others. When you root […]
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 […]
A woman walks to the river every day, out of a Babylon […]
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, […]
Rain brings the husband home early, white dots specking his neck and […]
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 […]
In Pasig, they put up a wall of facades to make every […]
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 […]
Oh, loved, beloved, you are dew on the jewel-weed, sheep among the […]
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 […]
look aside while i lift my hem (in some cases the lure […]
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 […]
A house. A bridge. A mountain. How many features make up a […]
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 […]
1. The Astronomy of Bondgirls I want to name stars the way […]
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 […]
Half the year, all we smell is the sewage treatment plant, down […]
— 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 […]
For Jessica Caum Keyboards click, phone lines light up, and before She’s […]
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 […]
A helix of gull squall all drove & dip plucks Odysseus like […]
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 […]
Cento V “When in doubt, do nothing.” —Marcus Aurelius. To do it […]
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 […]
That the switchbacked trail of tracks I’ve followed – through the pocked […]
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 […]
After all the soldiers come into the café there’s a lot more […]
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 […]
In the famous symphony, you know the part where voices rain down: […]
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 […]
Pray for black-outs. For a packed grandstand. Pray for ex-cons and no […]
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 […]
Shepherd of the specimened dead into fading archives of slides, you through […]
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 […]
Mentally, we are in love with each other or chemically, however they […]
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 […]
Pass them. You must. Dark-uniformed, sharp-creased — the whole force here. No […]
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 […]
I never wanted to be an astronaut, suffocated by thought: all that […]
— 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 […]
I knew it made me prized, helpless; that losing it would make […]
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 […]
You’re not all dead yet but soon will be. Truth is, it’s […]
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 […]
— New Orleans, 1718 We are approaching the marshweed and sycamore, the […]
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 […]
A round projector pulses light Across the ceiling like a strobe, A […]
— 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 […]
I’m telling you, I used to live in the wind. I ate […]
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 […]
In the beginning, none of us could tell rock from bone. Some […]
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 […]
In the dark of the theater, there are more fuck yous than […]
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 […]
Our morning is the movement of a wound, the trace of heartbeat […]
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 film by Stephen Chiodo Reports on the radio & […]
— 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 […]
On the news, war tumbles on. Protestors fall in the street. A […]
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 […]
What we heard about thirst was true. Everywhere, water. Everywhere, salt. And […]
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 […]
Oh, March. All the ice cracking at once like a banquet of […]
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 […]
Just as they always said. The flashing. The slowing down. My big […]
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 […]
Wet pink shock of a sliced-open peach, pit hard between our teeth, […]
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 […]
This is the season I learn foothold, to swing the slender blade […]
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 […]
When I was five, I thought I could live, if I had […]
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 […]
When a man loves a woman, he is asked: Soup or salad? […]
The season of married men. The fall I couldn’t get enough of […]
Today, snow gloved the trees like a city of hands. We shoveled […]
Depends on what dwindles (it all it all) depends on the assemblage […]
I feel home in my throat, in the black night with bats, […]
If I held textbook posture, knelt bedside, I swore you’d come to […]
The wind is having its way with the house tonight, with the […]
Matthew 8:8 Lord, I am the last person you’d want to camp […]
After the seasonal fires filled our lungs, we washed the linens. The […]
First, the webs between his fingers found him on the wrong side, […]
At nine, my father couldn’t stop placing a shotgun near the temple […]
Watching my mother tweeze a tick from her vulva, its body like […]
I robbed the ceramicist of his clay so I could make a hundred […]
When Phaeton rode his father’s snorting horses the earth bore flame. One […]
It’s the Aegean, windless, rustling between blackness and light. The boat carries […]
Red matchstick I thumb alive and send ahead of me through the […]
While our governor jogs just down the road with a pistol for […]
Because the night belongs to lovers. — Patti Smith And felines and […]
I could’ve been anyone when they found me, nook infant ecstatic below […]
He goes to her. He goes and so does my hair the […]
Enough times now I’ve dropped the blade of love in the lake, […]
In Princeton the leaves change like bells. Squirrels pass untouchable girls. Stalking […]
When Plato lay sick beside a window overlooking the hush of the […]
The lake freezes, the lake closes its eyes and a minor paralysis […]
We found ourselves in the kitchen again. Slant-hipped, elbow bent, your hands […]
I was there. The fan trembled. The plant trembled. The rented room […]
We drove the honey road, a seller at each curve with dark […]
Hélène Grimaud transforms Chopin into wild percussive hammers, the piano her anvil, […]
I In the tight-knit dark, in a foreign tongue, beside the shower […]
I want to believe we’re all in it together. But this is […]
While you were away, I walked along a path cut short by […]
Elegy for David A. Van Landingham Summer David. Coastal David. My David […]
I don’t want to live in the time of the lumbering dinosaurs. […]
My ancient, my coxswain, my caddy. I want everything: my bed etched […]
Let’s say you were ready / for bed in your brown-rimmed glasses […]
— a letter to Shea in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina No […]
I never really understood what Superman was doing in there. How did […]
That’s how your pulpy sex undoes me—Deborah Digges And this is how […]
The many demonstrations of grief grief of the body laid upon a […]
Fleetwood Mac is old but they have a big announcement coming up […]
— for Derek Gromadzki Cranes slip loud passing Through me their honks […]
— If you don’t drink wine, God won’t give you water. The summer […]
We’ll go alone into the darkest part. The sky’s wet rust, the […]
She used the stadium. I would have chosen the bridge. We’re not […]
No end to the river’s rituals of passage, the ablutions of believers […]
We float the rubber lifeboat down the cul-de-sacs. Through the backyards of […]
I was deep in dream. You were proposing again. This time, in […]
Today in Pest’s open air markets there is a sale on holy […]
His absence makes me out of mind. Out, heart—fucked limb. There’s no […]
I have lost all hope on keeping the bathroom sink clean of […]
There is a ghost in the machine of my body. The haunting […]
This is my striving for other chances to break you at the […]
The wooden parts are known as furniture, as though a rifle were […]
Flight of the marsh queen, winter branching from her head topsy over […]
No Pygmalion found me floating above the saloon tethered to nothing but […]
On garam masala afternoons I catch your rhythm in the kitchen and […]
We met among ruins. I was so much the dog, in Athens, […]