all of us all but us only
(but not us) the mammals or only
us: animal in us or only

the male of us: brute



no animals in the Bible

only beasts as of the field

not us: it says breathed

into in our image of the dust...Read more

(tired and high-pitched)

Ghosts have been tied into the trees.
At dawn they pivot
In the wind slowly.

Where the moon windows in
I am of those
Who can't stand it

Kept awake, humming with trucks
While anything lunar
Won't rut, ruminates. Overhead, uh-hunh-

...Read more

Editor's Note from ArcaMax: Sorry folks for incorrect edition we sent early this morning. Here is the correct poem! Enjoy...

Lake, interminable. I do not know where my house is. Where is my house? Summer steams by. Every border is cocked and ready. Flatten body against cool earth. Lie without sound. Be a cool corpse under wire teeth. The...Read more

to fever and the millennium. The bullet is all consequence. Sun Ra refuses red - long and high, low and deep. His arms are long
enough to embrace them.

About this poem
"This poem makes myth out of tragedy as a way to cope with the sublime horror of our racial reality. We hear stories of black men and boys being gunned ...Read more

The night is still, the moon looks kind,
The dew hangs jewels in the heath,
An ivy climbs across thy blind,
And throws a light and misty wreath.

The dew hangs jewels in the heath,
Buds bloom for which the bee has pined;
I haste along, I quicker breathe,
The night is still, the moon looks kind.
...Read more

Bountiful Givers,
I look along the years
And see the flowers you threw...
Anemones
And sprigs of gray
Sparse heather of the rocks,
Or a wild violet
Or daisy of a daisied field...
But each your best.

I might have worn them on my breast
To wilt in the long day...
I might have...Read more

& found myself at dinner opposite
The Moscow scholars a married couple-he only
the world's authority on Pasternak

& she the final word on her beloved Alexandr Blok
& as we talked the evening gathered

Along the length of the white table & I could only keep
drinking the conversation in so deeply <...Read more

Banff, Alberta
The mother elk and 2 babies are sniffing
the metal handle of the bear-proof trash bin.
I remember the instructions for city people:
3 football fields of space between you &
the elk if their babies are with them.
I'm backing up slowly,
watching the calves run into each other
as they ...Read more

I look for words in the dark,
silently describing to myself
the particular conditions of the weather
on the morning I saw you most recently-
the wind, its patterned disarray-
my mind elsewhere, distracted, lyrical,
while the pianist plays an encore.
Mozart was born on this day
257 years ago. All ...Read more

for Graham Foust
What is technology if not
a kind of built-in nostalgia

for the frantic past's long slide

into a slower present

Put another way: a decade

bends 8-bit bells & whistles

into an oxymoron it nearly

hurts remembering

tight lump on ...Read more

You came in out of the night
And there were flowers in your hands,
Now you will come out of a confusion of people,
Out of a turmoil of speech about you.

I who have seen you amid the primal things
Was angry when they spoke your name
In ordinary places.
I would that the cool waves might flow over my...Read more

Thy brow is grit, thy robe with gems inwove;
And palaces of frost-work, on the eye,
Flash out, and gleam in every gorgeous dye,
The pencil, dipped in glorious things above,
Can bring to earth. Oh, thou art passing fair!
But cold and cheerless as the heart of death,
Without one warm, free pulse, one softening ...Read more

or is true as
Happiness
Birth
A pure river

Conditions for the equal good
to be as wise and fortunate

at the start

Lost in the pursuit

Under a white oak
two children sitting back
to back on a plank swing, calling

The hand
that touches the ...Read more

the trees all planted in the same month after the same fire
each thick around
as a man's wrist

meticulously spaced grids cutting the sunshine

into panels into planks
and crossbeams of light

an incandescent architecture that is the home that was promised you

the promise of your...Read more

Unclouded third eye and lush
red wings. I'm pouring water
from cup to cup.

This is the water we are meant
to drink with the other animals.
There are daffodils by the water,

a road leading from the water
to the shining crown of the sun.
My white hospital gown-

off-the-...Read more

in memoriam Cecil Young
I am addicted to words, constantly ferret them away
in anticipation. You cannot accuse me of not being prepared.
I am ready for anything. I can create an image faster than

just about anyone. And so, the crows blurring the tree line;
the sky's light dimming and shifting; the Pacific ...Read more

The man sitting behind me
is telling the man sitting next to him about his heart bypass.
Outside the train's window, the landscapes smear by-
the earnest, haphazard distillations of America. The backyards

and back sides of houses. The back lots of shops
and factories. The undersides of bridges. And then the ...Read more

I Woke: -
Night, lingering, poured upon the world
Of drowsy hill and wood and lake
Her moon-song,
And the breeze accompanied with hushed fingers
On the birches.

Gently the dawn held out to me
A golden handful of bird's-notes.


About this poem
"A Gift" was published in ...Read more

Dishevelled leaves creep down
Upon that bank to-day,
Some green, some yellow, and some pale brown;
The wet bents bob and sway;
The once warm slippery turf is sodden
Where we laughingly sat or lay.

The summerhouse is gone,
Leaving a weedy space;
The bushes that veiled it once have grown
...Read more

Mira, like a white goddess, is translating
so my left ear is a cave near Kotor
where the sea lashes and rakes
the iron darkness inside
the black mountains. Young and old, the poets
are letting us know this sweltering night,
under a bridge near a river outside
Karver Bookstore at the beginning of July, <...Read more