You are once again rifling the sixth floor supply cabinet. Bethesda Naval Hospital gyn/onc ward. Late, too late to watch the babies sleep three floors down. Your mother breathes with assistance in a single room across the hall, warm apparatus she needed to give rise to you long since scooped from her abdomen along with […]
for Stanley Kunitz Sometimes between one of Stanley’s Well‘s and whatever he says next, there’s ample space to take a nap – it’s late afternoon, and the porch is warm and quiet—I can drift knowing the front contour of his next word will retrieve me when I’m needed, and he will not have lost the […]
“No creature ever comes short of its own completeness” —Dogen un-? or is it in-? let it be un– because it is animal living outside the tent, stalking un– or in– is it (you) or (I)? un– because it is also just a cloud, and you know it which is the fear? the un– or […]
There was one moment I was certain he loved me by loved I mean could see : my pants on the bathroom floor in a heap, legs up socks still holding the form of my feet waistband open against the tile slipped off in one piece and he came in to pee as I stood […]
one from behind one from below one seldom combed his hair one folded his underwear one was prone to orations one clever at spatial relations one had a knack for acrobatics one a keen mind for mathematics one angled three degrees to the right one liked to try on my tights one said I talked […]
I —This morning I read in the Times the Book Review section— —the average speed of ejaculation II is 28 Miles Per Hour— —How fast must thoughts come then? I hadn’t even finished the sentence— III —and already: every detail perfect, I’m testing a working model— —all that velocity in such close quarters! IV Why […]
(after Grenville Kleiser) It’s sweet, really, how you arrange them alphabetically, as if I could go to your book, seeking precision and find something there under, say, “M:” Memory was busy at her heart. You have this notion that phrases, used correctly, could actually do something useful. It’s right there on the cover, useful uncomplicatedly […]
(Rose Center for Earth and Space, NYC) All day children they touch me without stopping their questions and chatter They touch me and their questions stop Their hands all day inside these cavities and for a moment they are silent annulus of a wave then their voices begin again I am a shattered remnant of […]