Poems

Letters

I threw away your letters.

Years ago, just like that.

The tight black swirls,

circles and strokes

filling fine sheets —

I would not see them again.

The last items I had left.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading — treading — till it seemed

You Didn’t Fit

You wouldn’t fit in your coffin

but to me it was no surprise.

All your life you had never fit in

anywhere; you saw no reason to 

begin fitting in now.

When I was little I remember

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,

Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris

When Daniel Harris stepped out of his car

the policeman was waiting. Gun raised.

I use the past tense though this is irrelevant

in Daniel's language, which is sign.

The Wife

Living, I had no might

To make you hear,

Now, in the inmost night,

after a one-night stand with Myself i ask Myself to stay the night

i know she wants me

by her side in sleep. i do not really          ask          her to stay,

only imply she is invited. i speak

Day 62

Unless you believe in the eye of the needle

this kind of poverty will never be about material

it won't be about ragged clothing

or mud huts with broken walls

or river blindness

or murram roads

Equinox Ritual with Ravens & Pines

— so we said to the somewhat: Be born —

     & the shadow kept arriving in segments, 

    cold currents pushed minerals

Index of Themes

Poems about night

and related poems. Paintings

            about night,

sleep, death, and

Adam Posed

Could our first father, at his toilsome plow,

Thorns in his path, and labor on his brow,

Clothed only in a rude, unpolished skin,

Break, Break, Break

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

more treaty lines

1790 → treaty 2, district of Hesse (step into wolf)

province of quebec

“We do herby certify that the following goods were delivered to the

several Nations”

Journey of the Magi

“A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

One fish, Two fish, Plastics, Dead fish

recycling Dr. Seuss

Some fish are sold for sashimi,

some are sold to canneries,

and some are caught by hungry slaves

to feed what wealthy tourists crave!

A Noiseless Patient Spider

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

Tractor

More than a storey high and twice that long,

it looks igneous, the Buhler Versatile 2360,

possessed of the ecology of some …

Mariah according to my yt mama

when I try to talk to my mom about what it was like

to grow up surrounded by yt people in the prairies

in the 80s though it seemed like the 50s

she tells me in a so-there tone

Weed Killer

Our mother gave us a sack of weed killer

the size of a toddler, and told us

to spread it on the front lawn.

My sister and I lugged it there.

A light cloud of white powder

From the Window of My Home-Town Hotel

On the lee slope of the small coastal mountain

which conceals the sun the first hour after its rising,

in the dry, steep ravines, the live

mist of the heat is seething like dust

left over from an earlier world.

Adam Father

He wakes up naked and drunk as a bear

on sun-fermented garbage.

Hungover and queasy and riled up by

bees.

Nothing going well today, he moans,

life being short and the craft, ah, long.

The Poet

Out of the deep and the dark,

A sparkling mystery, a shape,

Something perfect,

From One and Half of You

Price depends on how the cheongsam

was made, the fabric used.

Gasp. Lift breasts with one hand.

Stuff your body inside.

If you wear this print of peonies

Arnauqatikka

                                                                 …

39

Oliver Sacks is going to die,

He tells us blithely in the New York Times.

He’s 81. His liver’s shot.

He’s blind in one eye

Though when both worked fine

Scab Maids on Speed

My first job was when I was about 15. I had met a girl named Hope who became my best

friend. Hope and I were flunking math class so we became speed freaks. This honed our

A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

To be a good

ex/current friend for R. To be one last

inspired way to get back at R. To be relationship

advice for L. To be advice

for my mother. To be a more comfortable

The Dead

How great unto the living seem the dead!

How sacred, solemn; how heroic grown;

How vast and vague, as they obscurely tread

Blow, blow, thou winter wind

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude;

Mother Church #3

KIN KLETSO/YELLOW HOUSE

CHACO CANYON, SAN JUAN COUNTY, NEW MEXICO

ANASAZI RUINS, AD 1125-1130

For Henri, at 2

In Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,

I walk from one epoch to another without a memory

to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing

the history of the holy ... ascending to heaven

Two Hours on the Train

During two hours on the train

I rerun the film of my life

Two minutes per year on average

Half an hour for childhood

Another half-hour for prison

Love, books, wandering

take up the rest

On Monsieur’s Departure

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,

I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,

Eight

The trick to building houses was making sure 

they didn’t taste good. The ocean’s culinary taste 

was growing more sophisticated and occasionally 

#BLESSED

Sunbeams aren’t something I notice.

Mostly it’s my own breasts, bobbing with effort

like I’m a man writing the story of a woman

and the way her nipples strain politely

Tide

Would I have seen her?

The tide tugging her gently past

the Comfort Inn; houses, tall and gabled,

A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,

A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,

Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating,

Jacknife/2

Each day, I am apprenticed to the boy

I want to be.

He rifles the ball

and I catch it

or I fumble.

His red head ducks and weaves,

thinking, end zone.

Coffee