All winter’s dusk and murk I spent hard at work against myself, depression’s demon a contagionI caught in dream, crouched on my chest. Thus lust-less and languorous, brain in a jar and ocular nerve, I went out of the worldand wandered around with the shades in hell. What could I eat then but the strange …
translated by sharon dolin Who Was She She had a crucifix at the head of her bed, and she wasn’t a believer. A packed suitcase in a corner of the alcove, and she crossed no border. An apron pocketful of candies, and she had no sweet tooth.A lavender lipstick the shadeof her skin and two …
I’m walking into the quickening blizzard as if into a hunter’s dream—the flint arrow through my chest keener than earthly desire. Wherever I wentteeth followed me, relentless as the shadow of the doe-eyed boy I thoughtI couldn’t live without. Long ago, love made all gestures of floweringpossible on earth. Now I’m tired of livingon the …
Is this the Year of the Rabbit, the Year of Luck?The thing about years is, you’ll be going along, thinkingthis must be the Year of the Dog, then suddenly find it’s the Year of the Beard and the Pickup Truck,another year of sand dunes and slowly sinking.The thing about years is, they have a mind …
that holds desire in—taut like ripstopover ribs arched back in pleasure—whipof whether—lash of self-restraintIn dream I pin you down between breast-bone and hard ground—granite spineof mountain, room blue with air—pleuralspace of atmosphere which I longto puncture exhale exhaustingly—unlesssex is sleeplessness in full sun under mosquito-spattered tarpaulin—tornbetween a gut-punch oflust & reason I tell myself not …
I took the ditch path back the empty lot across the graveled patch of scutch grass, musk thistle, the fox squirrel .22ed and rotting, coyote scat pebbled with undigested pustules of huckleberries. Pollen-scattered air. Busted beer bottles, lottery scratch- off tickets, chicken bones— alone, I followed my ear: thought of you then got over it. …
At home working on a client’s website—an archive of Yiddish memories—I look up in time to see a yellow poplar topple. Yesterday was Holocaust Remembrance Day.The hummingbirds have arrived like they do every April, flitting toward the lower branch of a weeping willowto the only one of five feeders that remains. Year after year, even …
I turn clay soil, mound rocks, squeeze grubs with my fingers. My spade, the soil, a rasp. A dry northeast heat wave.When I was five, Mamá chopped my hair. Wild girl, alwaysin a tangle. Holes in your jeans, grass stains on your sweaters. Through my hair, wind, dust, twigs.Impatient bumblebees,you know we’ll have flowers. I …
A space on a page that’s waiting for something else is where Pain Itself isput, the Lorem Ipsum,Latin borrowed from long- suffering Cicero’sThe Purposes of Good and Evil as far back as the Dark Ages soas to frighten the white panic of empty backto nimble lines of good and passing order. Nor again, Cicero wrote,is …
I Your good-bye is a warning:watch the horizon or you’ll miss my return. It’s a worm in the belly of a kelp-tangled gull, sea lions sparking from rocks, houndssent to hunt you down& bring me home; it’s white sailsswelling, my breasts in your palms. I wake to an empty shore. II By summer’s end, all …