"In the weeds" is how you say when you’re double, triple-sat when the four-top at thirty-two is waiting to see the dessert tray and the deuce at twenty-seven asks again for that bottle of wine. Later, this frenzy will feel like a rush, like the throttle of a motorboat, its hum in your throat. Even […]

The careful, golden light holds them all – the wounded supplicant, leg crooked and bandaged foot, the rotund cleric who drops a coin in an open palm, the calm virgin, and the child on her lap, reaching out to the world – the solid flesh, round limbs and faces, peaceful eyes. What burdens there are […]

Pity. Take pity. Surely, when the lion lies down with the lamb, it is not the lamb receives the lion’s share. The hungry are never satisfied. Hunger must be fed. The angel, body-less, matter of fact, daubs the door with an innocent’s brush: the first born dies with the last. Someone says, let the dead […]

Dusk The chime of an ice cream truck materializes. A moth ticks obliquely against a darkening screen.               (This could be any world.               This could be any nerve. This is the crucially useless circus in which I rehearse the bruise   I miss you.               There will always be               a hand beyond               weather — fire’s immediacy in […]

As wild hogs, fresh from a wallow,             scrape against the trunk of a telephone pole while rushing past,             smearing their flanks with creosote and leaving behind stiff bristles and splattered mud; or a cardinal intently crushes             carpenter ants in her bill, then rubs their formic acid along             her coverts and tail, […]

He keeps papers in the folds of his cape Scraps in the folds of his dark mantle Ciphered and deciphered there in the dark Carried and inscribed and read and discarded They leave him and they return Like friends abandoned restored and forgiving They speak to him in whispers As they speak of him when […]

The spit bugs have been very systematic, decorating each branch of the rosemary with a glistening ornament. Gusts blow thistles’ heads to smithereens. Clots of down straggle across the gravel. Gone to seed, blowzy heads of dill — I almost wrote nod, how passé. Last night’s singed moths are brittle. The flame burns guileless blue […]

Sleek as fox fur your message nudges through a lattice of electrons, Nemesis through Oort clouds or luminous fern through fog, evergreens lost at the edge: imaginary gains.

Hang it right there, beside The case of striated, alcohol- Swimming salamanders, or prop it On the floor back of where The door opens. Cream             and brandy in my coffee Blot out the sweet Potatoes’ peppercorns; at least We’re sitting at the grown-ups’ Table after all these years. On the television the president’s             […]