A Favorite Snippet of John Ashbery

  from John Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”   How many people came and stayed a certain time, Uttered light or dark speech that became part of you Like light behind windblown fog and sand, Filtered and influenced by it, until...

Your Hands, Like Discarded Feathers

  That morning, you told me you were terrified of poetry as a child. You told me stories of vines, stories of the things that continue to remain. I spent the following days imaging the dark circles left in the woods behind your house, looking in.   *  ...

Apartment-Living

  You turn in your sleep, and it is at times like these when I wish you could wake and listen: I am ill. I know there are times when you lie awake, hearing the sounds of another’s bed, hearing the sounds of children running in the streets after dark. These are...

Hypochondriac

  You and your wings have left me paralyzed—the ‘skeltered wings      hanging like crows’ nests, indefinitely, fusing together like salt and ice. And she said: Please, do not call me darling anymore. The sky still carried some of the incense...