we could send you out there
to join the cackle squad,
but hey, that highly accomplished,
thinly regarded equestrian-well there was no way
he was going to join the others' field trip.
Wouldn't put his head on the table.
But here's the thing:

They had owned great dread,
knew of a way to get ...Read more

The pine branches reach-the rain! the sun! the edge of the moving air! three goats!
Girls on razor scooters turn the corner and scoot
Autonomy actually shows, it shines amidst the stars of decision
I sacrifice hearing to writing, I return to the back of the train
Surrounded by nothing but tattered island nasturtia, the ...Read more

The grapefruit in the Florida orchard
has ripened into a globe in Hartford
for him to look at, not to eat.
If he had a tin can he would beat
it as a drummer in a band beats
his drum and steadily with a swish
and sometimes a gong. It's his wish
to escape from gray walls and sky
into a Denmark of the...Read more

They dip their wings in the sunset,
They dash against the air
As if to break themselves upon its stillness:
In every movement, too swift to count,
Is a revelry of indecision,
A furtive delight in trees they do not desire
And in grasses that shall not know their weight.

They hover and lean toward ...Read more

I am a shell. From me you shall not hear
The splendid tramplings of insistent drums,
The orbed gold of the viol's voice that comes,
Heavy with radiance, languorous and clear.
Yet, if you hold me close against the ear,
A dim, far whisper rises clamorously,
The thunderous beat and passion of the sea,
The ...Read more

because you're psychic
no one else could understand me
the way you

do and

I say
Drink Me

I say it to you silently
but it calls forth in me

the water for you
the water you asked for


About this poem
"I don't know much about love but I know ...Read more

The dog of time pitchfork canter laced with mercury after-crave
any semblance to human is speculative, we've unburdened the
mass, the massive body signage, bondage, turf implant
unwiring programs and last resort paradigms
indicated by the spikes in goneness unknowable
flash how it feels to be a terminator
to ...Read more

I noticed the mockingbirds first,
not for their call but the broad white bands,
like reverse mourning bands on gunmetal
gray, exposed during flight

then tucked into their chests. A thing
seen once, then everywhere-

the top of the gazebo, the little cracked statue,
along the barbed fence. ...Read more

We were stepping out of a reading
in October, the first cold night,
and we were following this couple,
were they at the reading? and because
we were lost, I called out to them,
"Are you going to the after party?"
The woman laughed and said no
and the man kept walking, and she
was holding his hand ...Read more

Time too is afraid of passing, is riddled with holes
through which time feels itself leaking.
Time sweats in the middle of the night
when all the other dimensions are sleeping.
Time has lost every picture of itself as a child.
Now time is old, leathery and slow.
Can't sneak up on anyone anymore,
Can't ...Read more

Cool your heels on the rail of an observation car.
Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour.
Take in the prairie right and left, rolling land and new hay crops, swaths of new hay laid
in the sun.
A gray village flecks by and the horses hitched in front of the post-office never blink an
eye.
A ...Read more

I
When the sea has devoured the ships,
And the spires and the towers
Have gone back to the hills.
And all the cities
Are one with the plains again.
And the beauty of bronze,
And the strength of steel
Are blown over silent continents,
As the desert sand is blown-
My dust with yours ...Read more

Like seeing a hot air balloon.
It's just like seeing a hot air balloon.
No helium or flame or 8 passenger basket.
No passengers possibly drinking champagne.
No pilot or ballast,
nor buoyancy, nor balloonist enthusiast
entering national contests.
No ballast, I cannot stress this
enough, no ballast, ...Read more

The Chinese truck driver
throws the rope
like a lasso, with a practiced flick,

over the load:
where it hovers an instant,
then arcs like a willow

into the waiting,
gloved hand
of his brother.

What does it matter
that, sitting in traffic,
I glanced out the ...Read more

I have enough times been the ampersand,
the hitch between two vehicles
the vehicle itself careening questionably
up the mountain road, which is,
in my opinion, poorly designed, a hazard.
It is sometimes called the coast,
the coastal highway, but never
the cliff-side transfer whereby you take
your ...Read more

circle of Giovanni Bellini circa 1505 oil on wood, is what
he fits between his third and fourth weekly pill boxes,
to remind himself to reorder. His routine about the anti-
virals is of greater magnitude, maybe, than the one in which

Mrs. Gardner used to place a vase of violets in front
of the painting, when ...Read more

crowded Monday subway its mindlessness botanical
you take the first seat claim it for your age your figural
effaced your t-shirt smelling already like somebody

else's sweat a toddler is crashing against your leg his
mom gives him a sucker he hasn't figured out how to
fit inside...Read more

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!
My spirit not awakening, till the beam
Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.
Yes! tho' that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,
'Twere better than the cold reality
Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,
And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,
A ...Read more

Are you bowed down in heart?
Do you but hear the clashing discords and the din of life?
Then come away, come to the peaceful wood,
Here bathe your soul in silence. Listen! Now,
From out the palpitating solitude
Do you not catch, yet faint, elusive strains?
They are above, around, within you, everywhere.
...Read more

My husband says dark matter is a reality
not just some theory invented by adolescent computers
he can prove it exists and is everywhere

forming invisible haloes around everything
and somehow because of gravity
holding everything loosely together

the way a child wants to escape its parents
...Read more