I’m watching football, which is odd asI hate footballin a hyperbolic and clinically revealing way,but I hate Bill Parcells more,because he is the illuminated manuscriptof cruel, successful men, those with the slitty eyes of ancient reptiles,who wear their smugness like a tight white turtleneck,and revel in their lack of empathyfor any living thing.So I’m watching…
With a Casanova’s careful art,he moved slowly,stole only one child at a timethrough tunnels specially dugbehind the walls of her royalchamber, then paid the Duennawell to remember nothingbut his appreciation.Imagine how quietlythe servants must have worked,loosening the dirt, the muffledring of pick-ends againstthe castle stone. The Duenna,one eye gauging the drugged girl’ssleep, each night handing…
The soul bereft and longing soTo have the lost be found…Before the movers came,we found the sparrows’ nestconcealed inside the chiveplant on the patio.And the bald chicks therecalling, unfledged, undone.Love, the mean days collectingscored us, and hourlysuch years: we feel too muchassembling what our worldgot wrong; black arteryof wires, branched hazard, ratstinking in the beams….
circling the city like a dingy, year-roundChristmas display. The Puritans were right! Sinis everywhere in Massachusetts, hell-boundin the population. it bothers mebecause it’s summer now and sticky – no rainto cool things down; heat like a woundthat will not close. Too hot, these shamefulpercolations of the body that bloombetween strangers on a train. It bothers…
rows of glowing corn andcabbages grown on acres pastthe edge of the city.Surrendered flags,their nightgowns furl andunfurl around their legs.Only women could be thiswhite. Like mules,they are sterileand it appears thattheir mouths are alwaysopen. Because they are thinas weeds, the albinoslook hungry. If you drive outto the farm, tree branches willpoint the way. No map…
Some of usare the come-hitherhoneycombgleamy in the middleof the trap’s busted smile.Though I let myself a littleoff this hook, petardby which I flail,and fancy myself moreflattered —no ugly worm!Humor meas hapless nymph,straight outta Bullfinch, mindingmy own beeswax,gamboling, or picking flowers(say daffodils),doing that unspecified stuffnymphs dowith their hours,until spied by a layabout youth,or rapey Godwho leaps unerring,…
a fig for your resistance though kindly gently lay yourhead down girl lay it down. When ready storm whensummer kilned smoothly as a cake. Awake! Awake andwide is field. And viral. Biotic. Field of patience of percolationand policy. Your human energy. Come again? What for? Infield there is no time at all no use a…
of shame and dog-eared certaintythat others less exacting might forgo.If memory’s an elephant, then feedthe animal. Resist revision: the standof feral raspberry, contrabandfruit the crows stole, ferrying seedfor miles … No. It was a broken hedge,not beautiful, sunlight tackingits leafy gut in loose sutures. Lackingimagination, you’ll take the pledgeto remember – not the sexy, newidea…
you know whatshe’s doingAnd so did Bernini,when he found Teresain the full-throttle ofher divine vision,caught her at it,carving this surrenderso fluidly you expectthe impossible:for her tang to swell up, ripeas seafoam, from the gulfof her flushed and fallingfigure. Perhaps this is howGod comes to us,or should come to us, all:the bluntly andbeautifully corporeal atprayers in…
a poem to you—which is how mostpoems to mothers mustbegin—or, What I’ve wantedto say, Mother…but weas children of mothers,even when mothers ourselves,cannot bear our poemsto them. Poems tomothers make us feellittle again. How to describethat world that mothers spinand consume and trapand love us in, that spreadsfor years and men and miles?Those particular hands that…
