The Times Are (after Sylvia)
floss for missing teeth.
Poison on the nipples.
A letter in a shed on fire.
Poetry
347 works
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…
They know my favorites.And if they beat me out the door, a…
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,
A Language Searching for a Home
My mother tongue, my birth language,
is far from dead, yet everyone
reassures me it’s dying.
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.
Visions
Another day of doom prophesy,
but my candle glows and warms
confidently as the flame reaches upward,
THE SPIDER
It all started when I tried to drown
the spider. Or moments before, when I hear
Nana’s simmered paranoia gurgling that welfare
THE DAY GIVEN
Breakfast finished, I ask mom what she wants
for lunch. She assumes this is only out of duty,
a carousel without music, but it’s reverence