The entire world wants
To pretend to be a foreigner
In a big box store & wander
The aisles shouting, endlessly-
But I am pretty sure that today
Is my day to not just be a guy
But to be the guy. A baby grows
In each drawer of the million-
Drawered cherrywood cabinet
That is my head & to keep <...Read more

Deities!
Inexorable revealers,
Give me strength to endure
The gifts of the Muses,
Daughters of Memory.
When the sky is blue as Minerva's eyes
Let me stand unshaken;
When the sea sings to the rising sun
Let me be unafraid;
When the meadow lark falls like a meteor
Through the light of ...Read more

What do I care
that the stream is trampled,
the sand on the stream-bank
still holds the print of your foot:
the heel is cut deep.
I see another mark
on the grass ridge of the bank-
it points toward the wood-path.
I have lost the third
in the packed earth.

But here
a wild-...Read more

Poetry does make things happen. A friend says, "I wanted
to let you know that my stepfather is chattering like
a schoolboy about a poem of yours on my Facebook page.
This may not seem like much to you, but this guy has been
giving me a hard time since I was two. You built a bridge
between people who never understood...Read more

Suddenly, a hole opens in the year and we slip into it, the riptide
pull of strange, lonely dogs and broken phone lines.
You forgive me if I mistake hunted for haunted,
but I do like to rearrange things in my body every few years.
Take a can of gasoline to the frayed and ghosted.
Lights out. All hands on deck.
...Read more

How do I convey the shoring gold
at the core of the Florentine bells'
commingled chimes?

Vast as a suddenly revealed
field of wheat,
that up-and-away gold
is equivalent to the match-burst
morning I returned,
intent as doubting Thomas,
to my old classroom terrace,
open to the ...Read more

out in the wild the kingdom
of worms spin in silence
in separation and live
to leave behind

what's become to them
useless such as luxury
begins and again becomes

the meticulous work
it took to shape a pattern out of
patience wore down a continent's

grasses into ...Read more

If a human body has two-hundred-and-six bones
and thirty trillion cells, and each cell
has one hundred trillion atoms, if the spine
has thirty-three vertebrae-
if each atom
has a shadow-then the lilacs across the yard
are nebulae beginning to star.
If the fruit flies that settle on the orange
on ...Read more

Your hair is long and wonderful;
It is dark, with golden
Lights in the length of it.

Long, lovely, liquid, glorious
Is your hair, and lustrous,
Scented with summertime.

Beware when you are combing it,
In the nights and mornings,
Shaking its splendor out.

I bid you comb it...Read more

Mine are the night and morning,
The pits of air, the gulf of space,
The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
The innumerable days.

I hid in the solar glory,
I am dumb in the pealing song,
I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
In slumber I am strong.

No numbers have counted my tallies,
...Read more

our first day,
a deer loitered outside the kitchen
window, chewing a clump of shrubs
in the parking lot between
their house and the commuter
rail tracks to the suburbs.
Furry ears, peach fuzz around
the antler tips, soft, dreary eyes-
afraid if I moved, I'd break the spell
of our ridiculous L...Read more

When I was a white girl, I had no mother.
I drank whiskey, lived in a house with no walls.
Girls visited and marveled at my room to breathe.
When it was sunny, they let down their hair, drank fresh orange juice.

We drank all morning, didn't go to class.
I knew which words to carry in the arsenal, which memory...Read more

Near midnight I'm held
hostage to the hazy upshot in the corner
velvet near a laced up tree and curious how I got here.

What a crowd! I think
and I think I should hoard my stash in my shoe.


Did you catch the census takers trying to autocorrect
the shelterbelt out of my history

...Read more

Mother of Stone, Cybele,
Stone Mother, keep me low,
Resigned, involved, confusable
As to the novice eye the vine
With wild thyme and caper, close
To your chemic soil-
Ash, tuff, and pumice-twined
In on itself to stand
Up under summer wind
And to condense the sure, sheer mist
That plumps...Read more

I was going to write about a crescent
of honeydew melon. An artist told me
she paints grids when she isn't
certain how to begin. A grid of steel

stores nuclear fuel below the surface
of pools in temporary rooms

with red railings. I glanced at one image,
then checked my email, my nightshade ...Read more

I walked upon a hill
And the wind, made solemnly drunk with your presence,
Reeled against me.
I stooped to question a flower,
And you floated between my fingers and the petals,
Tying them together.
I severed a leaf from its tree
And a water-drop in the green flagon
Cupped a hunted bit of your smile...Read more

What is poetry? Is it a mosaic
Of coloured stones which curiously are wrought
Into a pattern? Rather glass that's taught
By patient labor any hue to take
And glowing with a sumptuous splendor, make
Beauty a thing of awe; where sunbeams caught,
Transmuted fall in sheafs of rainbows fraught
With storied ...Read more

I usually wake up with acquisition
in mind.
I make myself the tallest pine;
I have more birds on me
than anybody!

The sun hits my head
first-it's cooled a bit
by the time it gets to your head.

I thought I'd get the most

if all the good saw me first
and affably went ...Read more

I am glad today is dark. No sun. Sky
ribboning with amorphous, complicated
layers. I prefer cumulus on my
morning beach run. What more can we worry
about? Our parents are getting older
and money is running out. The children
are leaving, the new roof is damaged by
rain and rot. I fear the thrashing of the...Read more

what was it you wanted us to
say after you died
it's awful without you making sound exist
you said ponder this
but none of us can remember
what now dear please speak up
when quaking became zeal to open
nothing now but a
medieval barking gargoyle
whoever gave you the tambourine shall
be ...Read more