More on: Poetry

Carpenter means Jesus—his hands to splinters, a bench to sand and rub smooth corners from the tree’s needle skin to build a boat. I want to follow Christ, but where? To a threshold—a place to marry, a pulpit where the preacher sweats, a precipice, the last land seen as others wave, that boat sails out,…

On a road that cuts through the richest, non-irrigated land in the nation, according to some Lancaster, PA, natives, a minivan slowed, and a woman with a good haircut yelled, Do you want a ride, or are you walking because you want to? I didn’t reply because my life felt so wrecked— no matter the…

Outside, the traffic stutters, some drivers blow their horns and the impulse bolts in dendrite-leaps from car to car. I’d like to think it’s the bellow of my stiff-necked Hebrews, shofars raised to lips, razing, man to man, the walls of Jericho to its stony knees. But it’s more how a monkey lopes— branch to…

Soon, soon enough, all of this, this lived life, this navy-blue couch, your confetti-splashed, yellow-striped skirt spread across it, your lovely legs beneath the skirt, the joyous aroma of toast in the toaster, a ball bouncing and the cry of boys, all of it will assume the stilted look of my childhood photographs. 1958, ’59.…

Virgin of the milk, you enchant words and they enchant you. As I grow older, leave powdered sugar on my shoulder and the smell of hunger on my neck. Bear with me, your lonely neighbor and his cup of nothing. Even your glance can be as uselessly pure as the tongue of a lion or…

Proverbs master the man. He longs to be simple who writes a proverb. A proverb well chosen for a tombstone is a life. He who does not understand a proverb is the hole in a wire hanger. The weakest proverb is great, though a great proverb is never weak. There is no weak proverb. A…

Goldfish in the horse trough nibble at morning’s surface. They are not busy; they are breathing. The sparrow threading straw under the eaves lifts whips of time to his mate’s music. This is the opposite of business. Birds, even singing, can be the architects of our silence. Would you be healed by being? Then be…

The kingdom of my kitchen invites one snail to measure a carrot peel with the full length of her body. Of Christ and necessity this snail says nothing. The celery shines. By morning, my countertops, my floor will glisten with the star road of her meanderings. It measures a universe of dark and light in…

—five—six—seven—eight, and one— The dancers drum onstage from the wings where they were before the downbeat, that prehistoric moment, bandaged and flinching, calloused, split, grinning—the tick-swish of soles on bare wood; their presence shifts how light leaps off the watch of the ex-nun’s date. Such sound bodies. Their backs, extraordinary overlaps of muscle bound to…

for William Christenberry Some people have told me that this subject is not the proper concern of an artist or of art. On the contrary, I hold the position that there are times when an artist must examine and reveal such strange and secret brutality. It’s my expression and I stand by it. ——————————W.C. I.…