Before Entering
By Poetry Issue 67
—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…
Read MoreEcho
By Poetry Issue 67
The sexton lives in a big stone house. After supper he unlocks his church for a fee. Our tour group pays to climb past organ and choirloft, into the belfry where the daring grip a sheep-skinned knot and pull the rope straight down into a scene from the novitiate when I was in love with…
Read MoreThe Cost of Lessons
By Poetry Issue 75
The sky clears like a good idea for a few blue hours sprung between industrial grays; it lures me out for a walk, unfurled and pumping, loose beyond my neighborhood. A child is taking advantage of the weather of expansion. He kneels on patchy lawn, kid businesslike, a box of wares and quick for sale…
Read MoreOn Visiting Carthage
By Poetry Issue 75
In high-school Latin, I first read Augustine and wary could not, even threatened by grades, be made to care for his florid rhetoric or thieving of pears. Uphill I trudge from the Antonine baths Augustine must have known. The basement remains where puddles reflect fallen columns, their leafy capitals upside down. A corner maquette under…
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