My Brother, Asleep
“Peace lily, arrowhead, aloe—
the last time you went to rehab
all your houseplants died. Absence parched
the heart of your terra-cotta pots.”
Posts Tagged "poem"
No Ruined Stone
“When the dead return
they will come to you in dream
and in waking, will be the bird
knocking, knocking against glass, seeking”
No Images
“She does not know
her beauty,
she thinks her brown body
has no glory.”
In an Unrelated
“We have almost nothing left,
no ground in common.
At best, a brand
or maybe a miniseries.”
Alone
“I never thought Michiko would come back
after she died. But if she did, I knew
it would be as a lady in a long white dress.”
Prints
“Seeing photos
of ancestors
a century past”
Early October Snow
“It will not stay.
But this morning we wake to pale muslin
stretched across the grass.”
At Arby’s, at Noon
“Some of us were arriving, hungry
impatient, while others had eaten
and were leaving, bidding goodbye”
Golden Hour
“When you caught one to keep,
we took it home and I asked you to teach me.
You showed me how to spike the brain—
I thanked the fish, looked away, pressed down.
We bled it, shaved away the scales,
severed meat from bone.”
Good Bones
“Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children.”
First Grade
“Until then, every forest
had wolves in it, we thought
it would be fun to wear snowshoes
all the time, and we could talk to water.”
Bloodline
“Ovid writes that Apollo loved the boy,
loved him more than any living thing
on this earth. But we know better.”
Breaking [News]
“I? become a machine. A transfer of information. They? become a plea for empathy,
an oversaturation of feelings we’ll fail at transforming into action.”
Cage
“The living room across the roadway
Cuts its square of light
And in it fight
Two figures, hot, irate,
Stuck between sink and sofa in that golden cage.”
Bent to the Ground
“They had hit Ruben
with the high beams, had blinded
him so that the van
he was driving, full of Mexicans
going to pick tomatoes,
would have to stop.”