Orange and Spices
By Poetry Issue 85
When Charles Darwin sat down, finally to write his big book he wondered, not how it would end, but where on the shelf …
Read MoreReturn to the Beginning
By Poetry Issue 85
The scrambled eggs, already fried and fragrant on a plate, slip back into their shells; each smooth white egg sails toward its vagrant mother chicken, roosts in a fertile cell. The melody beats back to eighth notes which settle, dark spots on the snowy staff of bass and treble clefs, then briefly float through Bach’s…
Read MoreThe Music before the Music
By Poetry Issue 85
When the concertmaster gestures to the oboe, silence flutters through the massive hall. Then comes the tuning up. Before that, though— go back. Before the obedient violin falls to his A, before the flutes, trombones, and tuba head like horses in the same direction to plow and plant one of Beethoven’s great fields. Go back.…
Read MoreIn the Beginning Was the Word
By Poetry Issue 85
It was your hunch, this world. On the heyday of creation, you called, Okay, go! and a ball of white hot gasses spun its lonely way for a million years, all spill and dangerous fall until it settled into orbit. And a tough neighborhood, it was, too. Irate Mars, and sexually explicit Venus, the kerfluff…
Read MoreChristmas Morning in a Hotel Room
By Poetry Issue 85
Out the window, the parking lot and beyond that, the highway. No doubt something important began or ended precisely there, or there, in that spot where the ice-white rental car is idling neatly, clouds of exhaust billowing up like hope, like the hope of the Christ child, silent in his mother’s arms, finally silent after…
Read MorePoem in July
By Poetry Issue 85
I’ve made plans to keep a private heart, a heart for God, I’ve made plans to pray, and each time I’ve planned poorly—no time, no time, no spirit— and my private heart has been revealed and it has been embarrassing, like when my daughter found my little vibrator—pink and smooth and fun with one bright…
Read MoreJune
By Poetry Issue 85
The black cat is always scratching behind his ears, always slinking off to piss in some hidden corner of the guest room. It is both unkind and self-congratulatory of me to feel sympathy for people who don’t possess a sense of humor. Where the hell do I get off, anyway? Admitting something hardly ever makes…
Read MoreAnd I Will Look for You in Fields of Poppies
By Poetry Issue 85
Paul Shaw breeds insomniac flies. He tilts test tubes at unstable angles, then watches wide-eyed as the flies inside go haywire. Thousands of flies fly inside Paul’s hypotheses; thousands of flies defy them. As fast as he identifies a pattern, the field of sleep expands. Paul celebrated tenure in October, and all the Shaws flew…
Read MoreHow Long the Long Winter
By Poetry Issue 85
Awake in the middle of the night, the river cracked with language, the ice of it a heave of squares and oblongs. Only the waterfall, its cold spray frosting nearby juts of stone with lace, continued to tumble as if it would never cease to move and be. Once it was, we lay down together,…
Read MoreMiddle Distance, Morning
By Poetry Issue 85
One by one leaves spindle in the wind, the clock runs down, the cricket’s chirr continues. Each year I try to catch the moment the chirring ceases and silence takes on its winter timbre. Each year I miss. Doing nothing, poised for a flash from the Absolute, awaiting rest from unrest, I’m blessed by uncertainty,…
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