Tag: poetry
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I Listened to Schumann
1. Last night in the dark I listened to Schumann, I listened and took notice of my listening. In the house adjacent this, a man and wife had built a fire, and while I listened to my listening I heard their children scream with such delight I’d never heard: in orange …
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Antonio & The Avocados
San Diego, 1974 Is this enough? he asked his mother, wishing the pits were baseballs, the bruised skin of those on the counter his father’s skin. All along 10th Avenue the world was erupting & without perimeter. The mound of them shone moon-yellow on a lavender tray. Enough, Antonio, & now you play…
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Girls at Yangshuo
Before the boats were built we sat on trees felled by storm and made songs for the river. My sisters came and we laughed at what we wore, our confusion and skin. There were no synonyms. When the elders arrived, the fires burned on and Kwa-Sun used a leaf to wipe her lips…
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Salt-Lick
the earth will deliver a long and timeless death to the hunter, return to his oiled gun, and the deer, return to the leaves, and the leaves, return to the dirt, urgent under this torturous moon, all of these boots encrusted with mud, urgent again under these torturous stars, fifteen years of crying, fifteen years…
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Dust Pneumonia, 1937
When my brother died, I stuffed his shoes with newspaper to make them fit I think of him when I wear them His lungs, always weak on the baseball field Couldn’t take it. They filled up like flour sacks OklahomaTexasKansasColorado Topsoil turned turgid all over the plains Invading him We played soldiers…
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That’s my answer too
The Artist’s Way & The War of Art Treating writer’s block is like untangling a really, really long, old rope. As you pull one loop through another, attempting a small liberation, you unwittingly add another knot. This knot and that kink reveal themselves as symptoms of some giant tangle that’s been there decades, and you’re…
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Tinghir
You were born in the mellah Made your feet leather on hot rocks made way for boys with donkeys ever the scrambler Your mother didn’t know you much seventh of twelve, always dashing off. While she did someone else’s washing, you and your twin brother switched places on a dare, then back again “Do…
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Homage to H.D.
I pound on the hermetic door. An echo, heavy as lead, rolls away. I knock again and the ghost of your voice floats out from under it, brushing my face, light as a spider web, light as a mother’s hand out of Ancient Greece. —My angels are my angels. I feel this,…
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DOÑA QUIXOTE
Two riders breached her low, eternal wall of books. Tiny, no bigger than the thumb that turns pages. One was long, lean, the small one meant comic relief, she knew. She’s numb to anything but words on paper. Her eyes watch. She knows, perfectly well, they’re unreal. Her…
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Glosa on Romance Languages
AL MARGEN DE MALLARMÉ AIRE DE MAR La chair est triste, helas, et j’ai lu tous les livres Ah, la carne no es triste, no lei todo libro. Jamas se me hartarán los ojos ni las manos. Tan enorme es la hora que yo no la cailibro. …
