sofreh-ye aghd
for Niloofar and Philip
the mirrored morning
pushes out
Poetry
310 works
6.10 a.m.
the floorboards don’t creak
twenty press-ups on the rug
sometimes
How to Pray
I can’t trim gristle
off fatty meat
and pray at the same time,
The Times Are (after Sylvia)
floss for missing teeth.
Poison on the nipples.
A letter in a shed on fire.
Jocks, Freaks, and Nerds (The Ford, Massachusetts, 1970s)
The jocks played
high school helmet-ball.
They dubbed the others
The World is So Small
I can smell a child’s fear
several continents away.
It is burnt toast bird guano chocolate chip cookies.
Instructions for Teaching Rain to Read Radiology Films
No one remembers who noticed first:
the rain pausing above hospitals,
waiting.
The Cartographer of Vanishing Organs
The anatomy atlas was never wrong.
It was only early.
Each night, after the hospital emptied
Arrangements
You bravos had better be ready to fight.—Warren Zevon, My Ride’s Here
I’m thinking bagpipes. No, not bagpipes.Too much hassle and too damn much money.Save that for something that
They know my favorites.And if they beat me out the door, a playlist.Mostly Tom Waits. The gritty
AGAINST ERASURE
Louie gunned down in his shop,
Boris struck and flung to asphalt by the drunk driver,
and now,
Erleichda
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
—Albert Einstein
It’s time, child, to talk about the feathers —
Per Stirpes
I stand as one, but I come with ten thousand.
~Maya Angelou
And now comes you, child,
Change of Seasons
Summer south of the border
iguanas pose nude
adobe-lined cities
A Language Searching for a Home
My mother tongue, my birth language,
is far from dead, yet everyone
reassures me it’s dying.
Buenos Aires In and Out
In
Out
Just outside the gates
Duty
The downstairs den glows with late-night TV.
My mother settles into Doctor Zhivago
after a day of caring for the six of us.
A Forgotten Christ
On “Christ Cleansing the Temple”, Wood by El Greco, c. 1570
We surely must follow Christ, learn from him,
unquestionable Master of love and tolerance.
Stumbling, Pitfalls, and Spells
‘Yo no creo en brujas, pero que las hay, las hay’
(Galicia’s cruel saying)
There was a thief whose bad luck set him
As Shadows Slide Away
When you look for my voice, find it
in my poem in slightly accented speech,
a Nordic inflextion, a Southern drawl.
Elision
Being an erudite endomorph, I simulaate earth,
thus engender effulgence, a kind of ozone
I believe is not easily broken through.