There was a moment when I thought of you, and I longed for water. Two black pitchers laid on the ground in the shadow of what must have been an old well. Their two mouths were crusted with the last snowfall’s ice. Their mouths like two ovals learning how to kiss a forgotten earth.… Read More The Separation
The next time you write about a man speaking to an object, consider whether the object should speak back. Particularly if it is an animal. Particularly if it is a red mongoose who has just defeated two King cobras who learned how to dovetail in the dark. Particularly if it is a woman: try… Read More A Poem About Writing Better Poems
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. * They were like tall flowers, bruised… Read More Your Hands, Like Discarded Feathers
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 rudimentary: the skin… Read More Apartment-Living
1. Create for me a river made of stone so that I may look nothing like you. 2. One thousand moons. Rutabagas at slumber. Soft birds. Each of these have something in common: They look nothing like you. 3. A girl runs through an orchard like a fish, all… Read More Ekphrasis
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 left over from a lunar rain, craters full of something other— something that… Read More Hypochondriac
Flutter and burn, you turn almost sideways, glinting like those who lay un-described and silent. Lackadaisical birds. Tell me something other than your two methods of circumference, the legality of chloroform, the two figures lost in the dark on the other side of winter. Tell me once I am lost in the middle of… Read More My Love For What Resembles
(I apologize in advance; this poem needs a lot of work.) Psychology & Wine 1. At first, when she was nervous, the girl peeled the skin from the back of her heels—nibbled her lips, crimson-blue— until they were nothing but pulled onions, the pale moons surrounded by red clouds. Lunar landscapes. Created in silence. 2.… Read More Psychology & Wine
It was on a night like this when I stopped trying to find you. Your body disappeared, and I was left in a sea of white linen and feather-down— the area around the bed and the main hallway like a thousand corridors. Antelope filled these halls, their eyes turning into many dark stratospheres, and in… Read More Early Signs Of—
“This is your captain: We are going down. We are all going down…together.” from Laurie Anderson’s “From the Air” LAST WINTER In the last few waking hours, you watch the world through unblinking eyes. People become impenetrable shadows, dark birds, until everything turns black on the outside. There are no tears. Instead, you remember a… Read More This is the time, and this is the record of the time.
I’m reworking “The Nightsky Often Looks Like a Mound of Feathers” and retitled the poem (I may re-use this title in a future poem). Here’s the result: A LETTER TO CALICO SKIN 1. Early on, you appeared like a curled robe on the side of a highway, like a young woman dying in the corner… Read More Rewrite
