More on: Poetry

Stands me, though it could be any of us, sliced open, scalp to instep, en pointe in formaldehyde inside a glass case like some macabre Houdini stunt. This may be a fin-de-siècle end-of-pier show, a sicko’s private gallery, a future museum of mortality—I’d be the last to know: dutiful sentry in cross-section, everlasting witness to…

Please give me the watches, Mother. Engraved 11-6-46. A gold Gruen and bracelet Bulova retired to a worn reliquary, a remote shelf, hall closet ripe: serial cakes of soap, tissue boxes, toothpaste on sale in case of another Depression. I’m surprised there are no smokes in there though Dad dragged on his last too late…

Ezekiel 24:17 said the Lord, this sigh indiscernible, although the si– contained is louder than the second fiddle, second syllable that ebbs into its chopped-off sibilance. The first one lasts awhile, the way we wish that pleasure would endure, the vowel long. It’s hard to leave the bed it’s made, mouth wide until the utterance…

Mr. Moore, who drank; his oldest son paid the bill without looking at me. The apartment with the dog who ate two paperboys, leaving only their shoes. The Morrows who once paid me with a hundred-dollar bill, keep the change. The Sunderlands, who wanted the paper unfolded and laid flat under a stone, Which I…

Sleeping pill dependence may prompt referral to laboratory overnights (Polysomnography, would you look good on me, electrodes attached?) and wee-hour waking may be a sign of depression, it says, but what could depress when neither son of Zebedee needed hypnotics, white ones like these approved by the Air Force in support of mission readiness, to…

Your place, not mine. Vessels for water, of course. Maybe one for wine. Bread, smoked fish, honey in an earthen jar. Basins for ablutions. The bed you share with pleasure to ponder. And somewhere for prayer, rug, bench, stool, shelf beneath the shell collection, keepsake chips of Egyptian glass, Silk Road cloth, a dark blue…

Abstain from staring too long at the sky. Stick to screens, little keyboards; block out birds with private earbuds; never hear the wind breathe harder. Watch TV. Always drive. Try to avoid a night outside in ladled moonlight, glowing broth. Eschew solitude; cut back on silence; call up someone just to gossip; send lots of…

I am not washing the window. I am not looking. I am not afraid. I am not dancing. I am not washing the window no matter how dirty. I am not buying bread today or milk or eggs or honey. I am not washing the window, ash and rain streaking. I am licking the pane…

Why do you call me good? Everything is good: me, you, the boy waving the gun: I hear him now, crying in the arroyo: I saw the car rolled and tried to help, but the boy with the gun was afraid and fired: the rattlesnake is good, the saguaro, the rabbit: the blood of strangers…

I’ve forgotten how it broke, the great cause or the petty cause that cracked the handle into three pieces and left me without a cup for morning coffee. In the cabinet, there were others of white porcelain, with steeply elegant lines, cups that matched their saucers. But my cup was Mexican, squat, and as round…