with text from D. H. Lawrence’s novella of the same name If there are destinies of splendour after all our doom of littleness and meanness and pain,I can’t see them.I have to guess that the man who wrote those wordshad no more of heaven in him than you,save that he was a mysticand gave himself …
based on an Edo-period Japanese tale This flesh born of fruitthis fruit born of soil & rain & nitrogenThe old man ate nothing but peachesto sweeten his seed lay down in the rushesfor the old woman to pluck!Momotarō, the peach boy sprung full-toothedfrom the cloven flesh, fuzz on his lipall his life never beardedplunged his …
over dumplings & rice, Nancy says you’re welcomeas she considers her ancestors & the goldsthey left, a mug of oolong clenched in her hands, tight claws. for the plants & their leaves you steep, the anti-oxidants, the paper, the bark, the silk of the insects. you’re welcome for the gunpowder, for the color unfurling across …
The counterman says Welcome back— he’s never seen our faces.If you want poetry, look in history.Three floors of Popular Mechanics and ruin.Nothing’s been shelved since Reagan took the oath. Across the street, sliver boys pander outside a bar called The Peter Pan. You know,my brother says, for fairies.Back in the stacks, deeper in dust, the …
The streets cut so narrow you can hear neighbors have sex, then,after a pause, pour cereal into bowls. Outside town,at the bend in the road, a wild fig grows over afence—stone, whitewashed— that keeps it from a farmer’s planned fig grove.Fruits bulb out— fertility icons— at their gecko-green, purpling bottoms. Broad, fat leaves spread out …
To become a knot untied, a bowline cut, a sheepshank slithered from its shape. To be unpolished brass, a deck unmopped,a porthole fogging with the weather. To be unstriped at the shoulder. To be a hand without salute, a body left in its unease.To be unmustering, unstanding at attention. To be not as you were …
atque in perpetuum, fr¯ater, av¯e atque val¯e. —Catullus When it’s over, he wants to leave without glasses raised togetherat his going, no last salute or sir. I admit to gratitude.I’ve never stood at ease in the uniform stillness of those wives,dependents as they’re known, the watered silk of their voicesat a ball, or the brides …
Be easy. No—Be smooth enough that you don’t have to be as hard as a four-year-old saying “hydrangeas” is what he’d say. He said it as slick as an ice cube sliding on itself or as a puck coasting toward goal. Maybe that’s what made him a Boston weed man, or maybe being a weed …
Strange to see the deer at this hour, grazing in midday heat on the grasses that fringe the interstate. Three together, where flecks of sunlight on chickweed and Dallis grass break up the heavier shadows of pines.All are small, one still with spots. A mother and her fawns, if I had to guess. She alert, …
In turns, the sky that evening was worked nickel, brushed tin, then the color of a heron’s wing reflected in the waters she hunted.In full dark, the snow began to fall again, and quietly in the distance, as ifto concede its thin claim on being, the city faded into night above the river.We were told …