Before the AIDS vigil, a stranger showed me how to poke a hole in the bottom of the paper cup and slowly slide the candle through so the...

X Marks the Heart My best friend called his former wife his “X” as if, by divorcing her, he’d rendered her to a box on a tax form that...

I walked down the church aisle second in line seven years old, pristine white veil, shouting of my temporary innocence. The candle sat...

Night’s Grace a predawn Sunday morning the beauty of the still slumbering city her neon streets placid and empty as the face of a woman...

Doing Nothing The sun has gone underground, but the authorities will find it. To Be Here Yellow leaf thinly slow-flies shallow serpentine...

I lay awake in bed, listening to the wind with the night like something dropped from some great height through the house. I sneak down...

Tree-limbs lavishly people Russel square while rootless students bury into the other or into binders. Errant puffs of pollen eddy about,...

An Unseen Woman’s Scream Wakes Ghosts Near Daybreak All the house’s Argus-eyes are open, so that, high-pitched but breaking, it bursts in...

Traveling Water Near Newfoundland’s coast humpbacks explode from water, skybound missiles in pirouettes off the bow of a fishing boat,...

Analysis of A Poem on the Tablecloth I.e.: Cezanne apples, Botero oranges, Roy Lichtenstein grapes, Williams plums, a Gertrude Stein...

Proud cocks crow in the Caribbean morn, muezzins call flocks to worship, lighthouse strobes flash danger. We sleep with our backs turned,...

Evensong When the blue shadow of the elm edges across the lawn, we head to the woods, my hand in the hard smoky hand above me. Sounds of...

Seizure 6AM. Morse code tapping collect from the underworld. I cling to sleep, clutch at dream’s empty cape. The boy lies next to me,...

Crossing that same river as Washington, I don’t feel as accomplished, I’m in a car with a woman who just spent forty-five minutes calling...

Stiletto from stylus writing utensil once applied to wax tablet incises its blunt end rubs out an endless erasure * Gary Snyder: the...

The Boy Who Hunts out of season tells me the fatty meat behind a deer’s eye, if eaten raw and right after the kill, tastes like dough—and...

Orange Ceramic Geckos I agree to meet with your boyfriend after your death We go from coffeeshop to Mexican restaurant Because he tells...

Are You Picking Up What I’m Putting Down? My GF tells me her new friend likes to lift I say I prefer to put down. Not to criticize your...

A house is a thing you leave empty most of the day, except the dog who spits liquid on the bamboo floor, upset the moment you depart,...

The Literate City “The city is all right. To live in one Is to be civilized, stay up and read Or sing and dance all night and see sunrise...