Poetry

No lines or curves to mimic the alphabet of the body. Her hand here, then gone left a nameless eye

We were, I thought, as Karl Barthsaid about Mozart’s music, drawing weight and significancefrom the yes at our center that overpowered and contained a no.A bow rubbed against an ancient string. Thunder caught between atmosphereand earth, windows struck by heaven’s…

Hit and Run Lover Met him at the low bar of the evening mesitting there nursing another rum & detachmentwhen in he slips through the thinnest crackin the door like an unpaid gas bill that tells youyou got two more…

This time, when your mother returns from the hospital,she isn’t volatile, but her eyes are black and the pills that stop her hands from shakingmake her docile, not gregarious, a word you heard in school and think describes her best.You’re…

Fridays, I drove Route 119 at sunset toward your old home, turning off at the potholed road to clatter through meadows dotted with cows and cornflowers,

1. Semiquincentennial I woke to find the big tree down,the maple I had hung from as a childon whose branches I’d assumedmy daughter’s daughters would swing free.There was no storm. I had not hearda crack, and yet I woke to…

My mother proceeded from this father. The sermon droned. She opened a hymnal and climbed inside, came out singing new songs I never heard her mother sing. Holy mysteries

I remember the movement of the body is policed by the space one inhabits. I remember poetry, too, is a constructed space, with rules attached to it. The rule for this poem is not to break.

As if to feel for rain he turns his palms upward, while outside the streetlamps bloom like night flowers To be honest, I had notexpected such a request from him, at least: Tightly And so,I cross the thick string over…

Notes Toward the Great Floridian Novel I Ruth dusted the taxidermy alligatorwhere it stood menacing the front windowof her mother’s tourist trap shop in Alachua.Behind the gator hung Hawaiian shirts,other gators’ claws made into backscratchers,and American flag glass breakersin the…

Self Portrait of Boy as Venus de Milo The way the light bounces offthe skin covers blemish and bruise. In the light, the bodyis a shiny bronze. The shadowbetween the chest gives the contour of small breasts. If notfor the…

Grandma was murdered at 42 when gun violence was uncommon. Mom had to identify the body. The coroner pulled the sheet down without warning. The corpse stared back at her. Mouth wide open. How could mom even take care of…