All day behind our houses, bulldozershave knocked down the tall oaks, the hickories, the poplars with their orange-and-lime cups suckling spring bees. Finally they’ve brokenfor dusk. The windows I walk past are lit with end-of-day succor: glimmers of ice clinking whiskey, a blade unsistering the tender flesh of salmon from its skin,from a basement window, …
translated by Ryan Choi Snow; falls—“ . . . what the snowhath wrought . . .” Christmas— time, in the pinkof a black man’s palm. Cake inour bellies, beneath themoon in the mackerel sky. Clear— winter airportnoons travelerspassing through. Looking glass: a boy’s glass ears, ashe munches on plumswith friends. Man— crumples andvomits on the …
The hawk is circling a sky the color of wet newspapers. All over town the goldenrod is going to seed, and the bees turn lazy with the lack of flowers. Even so the hunger persists. Look around. The nests in the trees are suddenly obvious. The sand confirms the animals. I think of you not …
A lungfish has a mouth like a kiss It rises sweetly to sip from the airfrom a flat earth thanks to Mercator turning a volumetric ellipsoid to a planeand with squinches dissolving domes in the Alhambra solidity was nothingColor was said to be only refraction Heart and Life were folded in our palmsYet a horizon …
Acausality says each moment is the result of itself Philosophy can propose some positions that denyeven themselves that a mind cannot know another mind But knowing does not require identicalityFruit that snaps the branch Virus that kills its host That bloom This poem All the unpredictable accumulating instants on the way to perishing
after “The Guest House” by Rumi The moon is nothing but a circular ghost backlit, just disappearing beyond the roofs, beneath whichan arm brushes an arm, skin sheds its light so thinly we forget we can seeAnd in our room, sleepon the brink of extinction, sheepout to pasture; their small black eyes blink night awayHow …
I Anna Votova Saves the MillAfter the fever there was no one left to pollard the graveyard elms, but at least the ground was soft.A week after our parents burned away, the men came from Bratislavato help, they said, but their faceswere the faces of wolves at winter’s end. So with the women I went …
It feels good to throw the minnows of my hands some mosquitoes of action, so the mind can go find. When you were alive, there were times I wanted to slip you something to make you sleep. I’m still ashamed of these thoughts, a cosmos of fire opal crimped in my pliers. I wanted to …
While you’re Just doin’ weekend chores with your boyfriend (or is it fiancé now?), I’m gorging again on the History Channel, trying to convince myself I might meet someone at the gym if I could just levitatefrom my sofa with the same ease and grace Chinese myths assigned to “flying dragons” some PhD (with a …
Some rooms are smaller than they are. Some rooms are larger. And some roomsDon’t exist, no matter how much We want them to. What does exist—A cup and spoon, a dog, a wish— Takes the place of what might exist.Even the breath you exhale takesThe place of the room you’ve dreamed of,And in that room …