Elijah in the Desert
By Poetry Issue 91
after Washington Allston Growing up, the coke ovens were open ears I uttered nothing to. Men labored here to impress themselves into the landscape, now rust & snake pits, the tang of copper in Dunlap Creek. Each night the ATV engines protest the approaching evening’s indifference. Its stormy immanence. In this desert, I scoured books,…
Read MoreThe Trick
By Poetry Issue 91
I’ve always loved that scene in The Seventh Seal where Jof, poor broke Jof the juggler, rushes back to tell his wife Mia that he’s just seen the virgin & child, so close to me that I could have touched her, but Mia is skeptical, wants to know what they’ll eat this winter, wants to…
Read MoreEvery One Such as I
By Poetry Issue 90
I came into the land as if into a kiln to add more fire to the fire burning. To add another body for the keen blade of the Hebrew destiny. And at a gloomy hour I feel myself in the land of Israel as if deep in the cut of the wound— and it is…
Read MoreWaiting
By Poetry Issue 62
On the hospital bed, a body: long, straight, and still breathing, though the eyes don’t open and the ears can’t hear. No sound escapes the body’s vocal cords to slip across its lips. Two women on straight-backed chairs watch and wait. The woman who is the mother naturally insists on hoping. Says she sees eyelashes…
Read MoreSunrise Insomnia Service
By Poetry Issue 68
Gethsemane’s sleepers, be with me If I sleep. Hypnopomps to the cock’s crow, To the olive grove’s Dawnshadows’ undergnarl. Skull-place, tricrossed, two-thieved hill, Over- Hang me if I wake. † The bed-world Is the total part, Unrememberable mnemonics Muttered through the dream (Now I lay me, Tarry here awhile— Now I lay me Down—tarry…
Read MoreGlosa
By Poetry Issue 74
On lines from “In Memory of the Spanish Poet Federico Garcia Lorca” by Thomas Merton Where the white bridge rears up its stamping arches Proud as a colt across the clatter of the shallow river, The sharp guitars Have never forgotten your name. I stood up to my knees in the April river and the…
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