Poems

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

The Swimmer’s Moment

For everyone

The swimmer's moment at the whirlpool comes,

But many at that moment will not say

FLOOD

The hallway is an empty

riverbed, smooth and barren.

At three o’clock classroom

doors open like dams.

            Gullies of teens stream

out, to become one

Question:

What do they think about you,

the people who pass you on the street?

What would you like them to see?

They see the druggie, the whore, the junkie.

Mother Church #3

KIN KLETSO/YELLOW HOUSE

CHACO CANYON, SAN JUAN COUNTY, NEW MEXICO

ANASAZI RUINS, AD 1125-1130

For Henri, at 2

Lima Limón :: Madurez

I wear a peineta & pin a mantilla to my hair

I want to be Conchita Piquer warning women

about becoming lemons. The goal: tener alguien

quien me quiera. I want to be my mother singing me

Sonnet VII from ‘Sonnets Written in the Orillia Woods’

C Wing 1

Your mother is missing,

the nurse hovers at the door .

Your mother is missing, a bit louder this time.

As if this was natural, a daily game of let's find the Italian,

A Practical Mom

can go to Bible study every Sunday

and swear she’s still not convinced,

but she likes to be around people who are.

We have the same conversation

every few years — I’ll ask her if she stops

31

We’re all aware that human hair is dead

Yet we spend thousands taking care of it.

It’s like an endless funeral.

The moment your hair hits air, it’s toast.

It only lives inside the follicle.

An Online Friend Dies Somewhere Outside the Internet

Freezes, goes blue screen, shuts down. Dead pixel, dark.

Ghost echoes, lossy in the source code. Time zones away,

people who have actually shaken hands with my online friend

Love Armed

Love in Fantastic Triumph sat,

Whilst Bleeding Hearts around him flowed,

For whom Fresh pains he did Create,

The Plot

Won’t let your bad self.

Let go of your old debt.

Tiring of your old self.

Won’t let your made bed.

Let your bad blood let.

Your grown debt get.

Flaxman

We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone,

Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought,

And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought

Song: To Celia

Come, my Celia, let us prove,

While we can, the sports of love;

Time will not be ours forever;

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which…

Pan Dulce

My niece calls me from my brother-in-law’s phone

While I’m getting ready to wash dishes. I pick up.

She says she needs to talk to her grandfather.

I tell her that her grandfather just went to sleep,

covering

in the broadest conception

of black music, which is the

truest conception of black

music, black music can't be

conceived. a music of covers,

black music covers, and cover

Buen Esqueleto

Life is short & I tell this to mis hijas.

Life is short & I show them how to talk

to police without opening the door, how

to leave the social security number blank

on the exam, I tell this to mis hijas.

Common Magic

Your best friend falls in love

and her brain turns to water.

You can watch her lips move,

Picking Up a Dandelion

Before dawn,

I pick you up,

then bring you closer.

My fingers slowly roll

over your body,

removing seeds attached to you,

free them into the air.

I hear you sigh

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

Family History

Only the beginning is true.

There was an island

and an orphanage

and a boy.

There was a train and a country

to cross.

CV

A ruthless catalog of sorrows:

years in front of the screen, diplomas before jobs,

and languages—all that torture—now ranged under Languages.

Where are all the wasted days? And the nights

Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15)

Constantly risking absurdity

                        …

mcPemmican ^TM1

first you get the grease from canola buffalo

then you find mystery meat

you must package this in

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring —

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens,…

1992

This is our welfare half

a duplex with mint green

siding shrugged between

Dream Jobs

Random Link Clicker.

Royal Bath Taker.

Receiver of Foot Rubs and Praise.

Ten Years and More

When my husband 

lay dying a mountain

a lake three 

cities ten years 

and more

lay between us:

There were our

sons my wounds 

and theirs,

The Poet

Out of the deep and the dark,

A sparkling mystery, a shape,

Something perfect,

Homeworld

this is the growing of things birthing of skin

and bone stem     and leaf     this is planet

earth beneath snowlight and desert sand

In Favour of Being Alive

    Twenty-four years ago
I tried to kill myself
but with my usual incompetence
did not manage to.

My Poem Without Me in It

My poem without me in it—would it be like

my room when I had returned to it

after my mother was done with me.

Under my bed, only the outer

space balls, of dust, only

the asteroids of hair, no bent-legs

My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears

My grandmother puts her feet in the sink

                  of the bathroom at Sears

to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer,

wudu,

Childhood

In the apartment with the orange

shag carpet, is one long table

surrounded by chairs,

only four of them matching,

and cups and pitchers and food, and large,

silver plates for sharing, a pot,

At the Centre

Today doves flew from my head

and my hair grew

the longing is gone from my body

My Last Duchess

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now; Frà Pandolf’s hands

My Meadow, My Twilight

Sure, there’s a spell the leaves can make, shuddering, 

and in their lying suddenly still again — flat, and still, 

like time itself when it seems unexpectedly more