He was into Bob Marley, so his parents chose reggae as the theme. A red-, yellow- and green-striped flag with “We Are Free” marks the scene—a break easily missed in the twisted road that flanks the high Galilee. His mom offers bracelets, with “We are Free” for the taking. He took that flag to the army. A missile hit his… Read more →
Been hoodwinked. Flattened by shenanigans. Bent misshapen in imitation of a downward facing dog. Pushed about the braid and swaddled. I hedge on the billow clouds. Laid my butter pouch alongside this quiet pond at dusk. I consider my resemblance. I’m in vigorous frisk of dismay. Been dimmed about by the brazen sun lowered into a cooling bowl. Within this… Read more →
My chair takes to air I need a stepladder in the steam that powers me to see the damp I hear my parents say … Read more →
i told my son about the flower the seed and root of the flower the ego of the bloom the little bits of stone that surround the flower to become part of a garden the ways the woods can darken without the flower and he ate the flower and he smiled and in his mind he became the flower he… Read more →
in memory, Lynn The more she is crowded by tumors the more she chooses this: butter enough to choke a dog. Sugar piled on her Cream of Wheat. Roses that open gorgeously — she hobbles out to see. Her peonies outrageously sexy, the color divine. Whole churches push up from the ground to worship less. Looking over her work, brick… Read more →
Don’t look for a unifying face. Rather, be the air that holds the bird, the dark at the perfected edge of lamplight, an expanding room of locks where disarray prepares itself. At my wedding I wore white, flat as I could be. This, so that later, a defector to the background, I could fool the pez-nerce viewer trying to guess… Read more →
In another universe there is a room where we sleep like planks. Sawdust drifts from the bedding; an apple in the mouth of the wounded. There are nine parts to this story, and a snake that takes its time with my throat. Sinew to sinew is penance for wreckage. For illicit tincture. Bone to bone is how I say let… Read more →
We let it sit, heavy thing with thorns. The table sags under limp stems. We poke at it, continue this blue dissection, brash miscroscoping. I could tell you how it feels to hold a dead thing, to be content with rings of pollen instead of metal. I want to lie and lie and tell you that I am the bad… Read more →
I’ve brought my own bonnet. When the good Lord comes: ready! But I keep shifting like April snow out of my own photo. The part of me that can’t be seen, that’s the unrolled stone (Hallelujah!), that’s the black screw turned tighter into the bedstead. It’s the sighing falsehood of ice eating all of the pond’s air, a rocker stilled… Read more →
Here, for Cornell, I make my smallest collage. From a nature magazine published in the 50’s I cut this patch of wild grass, still humming with greens and browns, because four color printing was just that ideal then, still humming, following the rules of still lifes, with the lion who walked out of the photo just in time and I’ve… Read more →