More on: poetry

Images want to be kissed and touched and heard; they want to trade places with the beholder; they want everything and nothing. W.J.T. Mitchell A scholar asks, What Do Pictures Want? ———–says there’s a surplus ———–in the sign. If a color wants ———–to trade places with me, ——————how does it ask? The last painting I…

, the color for which we get the phrase
born in the purple,

I’m juggling people I’ve known
like someone who’s just learned to juggle.
Two balls is the most I can do:

Hard to tell if this is a path at all.
The only signpost I see, I can’t read.
——Below me lie fields of barley,
uptrail the rockface rears like a dragon’s back.

Given your red eyes, grizzled cheek,
——the boozy scent coming off your skin,
you probably forgot the young woman

In the beginning God created Kansas,
and it was without form and void, a grid
in two dimensions. And God said, Let
there be roads.

We come into dusk
on roads narrowed by briar,
dewberries firing red
and purple musk in heat.

We come into dusk
on roads narrowed by briar,
dewberries firing red
and purple musk in heat.

We come into dusk
on roads narrowed by briar,
dewberries firing red
and purple musk in heat.

There at the petal’s edge a hint of decay encroaches upon the timeless stillness of the still life. The sunflower, seed-heavy, hangs its head. As if to fix the flux: a distant bell about to be rung.