Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly ...Read more

I dreamt of making sense,
parts of speech caught up in sheets
and blankets, long strips of fabric
wrapped loosely around shoulders,
goblets, urns, cups with unmatched saucers.

You were there, and the past seemed important,
what was said, what was done,
feelings felt but maybe not expressed,
...Read more

Let there be footfall and car door. Let me
be finished with fire. Let
the man get on a plane for his morning
departure, erasing each reverie. Soon
there will be only daylight,
maybe a blue envelope, torn. Maybe bracelets
of color from the petunias. I will need
to know how to recover
the ...Read more

At least there was a
song timorous of

wing-beat snowdrift ash
of red horizon

then somewhere calling
as under one's breath

(I did not hope you
would find me wanting)

and the next extinction
on every wing-


About this poem
"Phrases and ...Read more

Nicole Callihan

American, thrice born again

Makeshift Altars

Wood, tile, glass, liquid, an iPhone, some leather, bluegrass, French onion dip, ribbon, what appears to be human flesh (but is not), petals from the neighbor's garden

Of Makeshift Altars, the artist says, "There are things we...Read more

for letting me know
for waking up to remember that you dreamed
I never wake up when I dream of you

What woke you up
was it someone
else's body?

A small thrill a little secret is ours
a desire for safe travel
in unspilled blood


About this poem
"Don't you ...Read more

In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace-
Radiant palace-reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion-
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair!
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
...Read more

Come with rain, O loud Southwester!
Bring the singer, bring the nester;
Give the buried flower a dream;
Make the settled snowbank steam;
Find the brown beneath the white;
But whate'er you do tonight,
Bathe my window, make it flow,
Melt it as the ice will go;
Melt the glass and leave the sticks<...Read more

this the week of our son's first
upright wobble from kitchen

to living-room and he begins planting
tiny Os wherever his fleshy fingers

can reach each first shelf each chair
cushion each pair of shoes he goes

to bury a piece behind the TV
inside the pool of exposed ...Read more

That arrow & life were homonyms. That his name
Predates all others, incised sunbaked on a slab
Of Eupratian clay. Stylus a broken reed, though it

Carries somehow the bedazzled opalescent mojo
Of transfiguration. The hand which holds it edges right
& reaching the margin circles back, right to left
...Read more

Live fast
and dye your hair.

That's what I wrote on my
Converse in 8th grade.

Maybe it was the way
the feeling pulled me

like a girl
pulling a ponytail.

Maybe I didn't get the job
cause of the polka dots.

Maybe I don't care
cause of the wave....Read more

The amazing thing is not
that geese can get sucked
into an Airbus engine
and cause it to conk out
or that a pilot can tell air
traffic control, "There's only
one thing I can do,"
then take a deep breath
and do it-ditch
in the Hudson with a buck
and whine, then walk
the aisle ...Read more

The love of each of us
for some of us,

of some of us

for all of us-

and what would come if it were
welcome, if learning were
to prepare "a self with which to

welcome"

the in-

admissible, stranger

whose very being gives
...Read more

Whiter
than the crust
left by the tide,
we are stung by the hurled sand
and the broken shells.

We no longer sleep
in the wind-
we awoke and fled
through the city gate.

Tear-
tear us an altar,
tug at the cliff-boulders,
pile them with the rough stones...Read more

If you should tire of loving me
Some one of our far days,
Oh, never start to hide your heart
Or cover thought with praise.

For every word you would not say
Be sure my heart has heard,
So go from me all silently
Without a kiss or word;

For God must give you happiness...
And ...Read more

Rocket-shaped popsicles that dyed your lips blue
were popular when I was a kid. That era got labeled
"the space age" in honor of some longed-for,
supersonic, utopian future. Another food of my
youth was candy corn, mostly seen on Halloween.
With its striped triangular "kernels" made
of sugar, wax and corn ...Read more

in his wide wide palm the reigns loose as a foundering
pulse the sky gone
the color of the dying too
and the night kneels
on the throat of the morning
the turkey is clocking and
the night is a preservationist
the morning is a revisionist and
the child is erasing her skin
with a toe thick ...Read more

All I ever wanted was that living room, Sunday evening, chicken
In the roaster, that deep orange sofa, that maple table
Spread out like a wagon wheel upon which cups of tea floated
And macrame or puzzles could be assembled. Don't tell me

Disney isn't reality: whole cities have ticked by in nylon print
T-...Read more

Marlene Dietrich remembers the night of the Marilyn Monroe
Productions Press Conference, New York City, January 1955

I wanted to be that trace of scarlet lipstick
when you arrived, tipsy, a bit chartreuse
a subdued platinum angel, a white mink

stole. I am at heart-Come up for a drink-
a ...Read more

I came upon a fragment, one
anterior lion felling
one anterior bull. I was in a
museum so can't call
it life, but here I felt my life come down
upon my life and have something to say about
the continual downhill grade
of the path from the ancient marble
quarry the dark marble

here was ...Read more