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

Black horizons, come up.
Black horizons, kiss me.
That is all; so many lies; killing so cheap;
babies so cheap; blood, people so cheap; and
land high, land dear; a speck of the earth
costs; a suck at the tit of Mother Dirt so
clean and strong, it costs; fences, papers,
sheriffs; fences, laws, guns; ...Read more

Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the ...Read more

In later life I retired from poetry,
ploughed the profits
into a family restaurant
in the town of Holzminden, in lower Saxony.

It was small and traditional:
dark wood panelling, deer antlers,
linen tablecloths and red candles,
one beer tap on the bar

and a dish of the day, usually...Read more

Thirty seconds of yellow lichen.

Thirty seconds of coil and surge,
fern and froth, thirty seconds
of salt, rock, fog, spray.

Clouds
moving slowly to the left?

A door in a rock through which you could see

another rock,
laved by the weedy tide.

Like filming ...Read more

We are underwater off the coast of Belize.
The water is lit up even though it's dark
as if there are illuminated seashells
scattered on the ocean floor.
We're not wearing oxygen tanks,
yet staying underwater for long stretches.
We are looking for the body of the boy
we lost. Each year he grows a ...Read more

A trapezoid. Piano keys fill soup bowls.
The moon wreaks havoc on the dandy
in a field of proclamations.

A chamber pot. Walk-in closet rife
with used jackhammers. I find a helmet
by the washer-dryer for my free

free-speech call. The power dips
during dinner, sends every clock protesting...Read more

It's very easy to get.
Just keep living and you'll find yourself
getting more and more of it.
You can keep it or pass it on,
but it's a good idea to keep a small portion
for those nights when you're feeling so good
you forget you're human. Then drudge it up
and float down from the ceiling
that ...Read more

Whose fingers wore your ivory keys
So thin-as tempest and tide-flow
Some pearly shell, the castaway
Of indefatigable seas
On a low shingle far away-
You will not tell, we cannot know.
Only, we know that you are come,
Full of strange ghosts melodious
The old years ...Read more

A crimson fire that vanquishes the stars;
A pungent odor from the dusty sage;
A sudden stirring of the huddled herds;
A breaking of the distant table-lands
Through purple mists ascending, and the flare
Of water ditches silver in the light;
A swift, bright lance hurled low across the world;
A sudden ...Read more

Tiny keyboard bearing the massive reverie of the past-
press one button, we're carried away on a country road,
marching with saints, leaving the Red River Valley...
here is every holiday you hated, every hard time,
each steamy summer wish. You closed your eyes
in the wooden stairwell, leaning your head ...Read more

Wrestling that old beauty
"Body and Soul"
To the ground

The genus award for epochal comes besotted
Complicity follows like caramel on a sponge mop
Child-bearing babies on stilts

I dreamed you were felled by an unspecified illness
In yours I was rowing a leaky boat, even though
The...Read more

If tonight the moon should arrive like a lost guide
crossing the fields with a bitter lantern in her hand,

her irides blind, her dresses wild, lie down and listen to her
find you; lie down and listen to the body become

the promise of no other, the sleeper in the garden
in its own arms, the exile in...Read more

The ventriloquist's vines fled to an address on the floor of a cumulus pond. The forest formed gills. The tentacles muttered. Eat a bee. Try to project the tiniest s tar deep beneath this fence. The ravaged shadows repaired in the shade. The numb p anorama rewound.

About this poem
"I wanted to make a surrealist ...Read more

Take this quiet woman, she has been
standing before a polishing wheel
for over three hours, and she lacks
twenty minutes before she can take
a lunch break. Is she a woman?
Consider the arms as they press
the long brass tube against the buffer,
they are striated along the triceps,
the three ...Read more

We climb the slopes of life with throbbing heart,
And eager pulse, like children toward a star.
Sweet siren music cometh from afar,
To lure us on meanwhile. Responsive start
The nightingales to richer song than Art
Can ever teach. No passing shadows mar
Awhile the dewy skies; no inner jar
Of conflict ...Read more