More on: Poetry

was what our nuns called it, the bread of angels, the Lord’s supper on the eve of his pure and holy sacrifice, their black habits hovering over us like threats, always the rosary dangling from a curveless hip, always chalk dust swirled on the cracked blackboard, above which the patron saints sat awaiting our prayers…

The brush might absorb too much water. Not enough. His stroke could be too heavy or hesitant. The ink could blot. Refuse to spread. Spread in the wrong direction. The Japanese brush painter has trained for years to face this moment. On his knees, leaning back on his heels, today he pictures the heron, come…

Reel rolling from the spliced-together lot of my past, this time around: senior year of high school, singsong voiceover of girls bowing to whatever she said, Yes, Sister/ No, Sister as still shots are superimposed on our faces: lone crow on a fencepost, cow silhouetted against late afternoon. Byron, Keats, Shelley—lining up to wander line…

I When my father meets God he says, Let me introduce myself…. When my father meets God he says, Am I too early? Too late? When my father meets God he says, Do you serve drinks here? When my father meets God he says, It was easier not to believe. When my father meets God…

This is the season of dried rushes and sodden leaf-matter in parks, when the lightly furred animal bodies of the people break out in sores and a mild but insistent contagion blooms in the chilly dampness. The lowered sun does not yet warm them, despite cerulean skies. The meat-headed race trundles along in groups, God…

This is your infinite being. Well, then, I am screwed, since the lozenge-cool om of the yogi misfires: not launching me like a sweat bead to float midair, but jangling my shorted nerves, which despite practice remain fidgety and ridiculously hidebound. And I think, is this it? Is this all I will glimpse in this…

Bus of marigolds. Caravan of peace. Appeals. Thousands of families divided blow kisses. Who is desperate to cross over. Who must see his father’s grave. Despite. And painted right across the bus, I broke the swords and made of them sickles, from one of their poets, who —you’ve heard this before, I’m sure— is also…

This is where I live. This is the house in which I, we, once—this is the small square window that works as a porthole to make the pantry a boat, the leaves water, the lawn chair a skiff. Some late shadows are rowers in breeze. Some toys are anchors. The phrase all this fall fills…

Has birth ever peeled you apart Has birth ever hollowed you out For I have seen a woman being transfigured Into lips her water breaking like the first Ocean spilling between the thighs of creation And then between those lips her firstborn crowning Like a tongue that dips to test the light and scalds Have…

like a slap, like a bone, like a spice, like a thought gone still in the light, another kind of sorrow, a kind of life, a cheek stroked, then freckled. Its rhythm amounts to injury, to a small space. No singing. Just a sack of air, a soiled shirt, more sermonizing that picks away at…