POETRY

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
—Rita Dove
Going Broke

Winter sat like a wolf
on the horizon.

Good Driver

Lights on the dashboard spell out
“You still can’t kiss me”

love poem with dead leaves & color

I would always rather be happy than
dignified. Rather held than held
in awe.

things they won’t tell you but should:

love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt

On the Night Row-Houses Across the Street Catch Fire

You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.

Snow Falls from Branches

Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night;
should have boiled old coffee before noon.

melting ice cap
blue is the color of surrender

you know that
baby swallows make silver ripples
in wild rivers to court reeds?

An Endeavor of Being Now

We stop doing dishes while
a mile unwinds
from the tree outside.

Soft Porn and Cuban Pine

It recommended
soft porn, as gentle prodding and petting parent
to parent might calm and soothe the kid.

Getting Postcards From a Piano Showroom

The two of us toast to a man we both love, to whatever degree, clink our glasses and laugh…

Drowning in sky

I have observed, the theorist
I am

Landscape with Ash

You are strange, my mother said, dwelling on the past.

appetites

you quit wearing pants
loaf around your yard
in hole-nipped panties

Fallout Shelter

I imagined a cascade of slow death for all / that mattered…

Mom, in Her Dementia, Steals Oranges

and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub
at the Assisted Living Place

Ode To the Dove Pt. VI (Avrom Sutzkever)

Yes I am guilty, I’m guilty. A sin was desirable then.
Bring the dancer back to the stalks.

[Zoetrope with Particulates in it and a Newborn]

and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud

Lobster

I suffer visions and many indignities
while looking for the Lobster

i do not want to wait until it’s too late

the strands of your hair on the bathroom tiles aren’t sketching defeat. that’s you spitting disease in the face with another day you’ve woken up to.