I watch my granddaughter Walk before me Or rather, I watch the men Staining their necks As they watch her walk by, Young hips swaying like the sea Oblivious. And I am proud That the blood of my blood Can draw such rapture Such admiration Perhaps a little lust, And I catch their eyes And
There was a stand of trees Where the road from work Teed into the road home. They would dance in the wind, So close, their branches mingled, If one moved, they all moved, Choreographed. I would sit at the light, Waiting to turn, and watch them dance Swaying and bobbing with the wind. I would
some minor city in Illinois past midnight, the neon signs running on the wet pavement the tavern hard by the tracks we stop here to let one off or two get on — minutes of stillness in the long rough night I watch him stumble from the bar try to light a cigarette, give up.
She listened as I’d read my awkward lines of verse at night, sitting, legs splayed and silent, on the bed in shabby underpants–you could hardly call them panties: faded cotton, color indeterminate, loose-fitting, frayed. (Stray threads caressed her thighs; a poet in times past might rhyme with envy on those loose ends). Her breasts were
We watched the mermaid comb seaweed from her haughty breasts as moon-pulled waves sang their timeless John Cage song beyond our outward gaze beneath the pier that August night in Provincetown. Only silence passed between us. And wonder. And a night of blissful sleeplessness.
Mismar (Urdu) n. Demolished you left me like a storm leaves a city : in ruins. and all i could do was gape at the damage in the eerie silence of your absence. so how am i supposed to believe him when he tells me he loves me? his kisses remind me of your favorite
The building maker’s second son walks up and down flight after flight of stairs with a ring of keys. Lock doors. Count A. B. Still. The site is under construction. Mid-morning groaning ceases for fifteen minutes. Then the first call is heard. ‘Lot 47’. Look a rickety elevator shaft floats upward. ‘Semi-detached unit’. Look someone’s
Fly to the place (not the person) in your mind. Do it in a dream. Imagine it’s years from now. Laugh. Cover. Laugh some more. Know so little of each other and so much. Mother. Meet family. Love. A daughter. Moon. Heartbeat. Red. Art, but don’t do it on the wall sweetie. Flash a life.
String after string mark the rows where rake and I must pull. What if I find a knot. What if I am caught, my rake beating like a bird wing against the earth. * Evening. I empty the last bucket of blueberry. Follow the string back to the barren. Enough, I think, enough of following
Our girl, turning seventeen today, has grown too big for her pink room. She feels closed in by the four walls we helped her paint. The whole narrow house, in fact, is too small for her blonde longitude. The rooms, the people, the whole city lack the latitude she desires. When she stands before her
