How, Alan Turing thought, does the soft-walled,
jellied, symmetrical cell
become the asymmetrical horse? It was just before dusk,
the sun's last shafts doubling the fence posts,
all the dark mares on their dark shadows. It was just
after Schrodinger's What is Life,
not long before Watson, Franklin, Crick, not ...Read more

Trying to fall asleep,
I count down stone steps
into the dark, and there they are:
Centaurs, half in and half out
of the woods, hindquarters still trees.
Downstairs in dreams I look
directly into their man-eyes,
which are opaque, absorbent.
They don't speak. I don't speak
of the long yellow ...Read more

this week's last load of laundry has me stealing
my son's precious teenage time I reenact the duty
of my father and what comes hammering back
are trips with him pushing his cart of dirties down

the street his southern charm waving or shaking
hands-: bus driver mailman neighbors get

...Read more

The magazine on my lap talks
about milk. Tells me that in America,
every farmer lost money on
every cow, every day of every month
of the year. Imagine that? To wake
up and know you're digging yourself
deeper into a hole you can't see
out of, even as your hands are wet
with what feeds you. That's ...Read more

To show the lab'ring bosom's deep intent,
And thought in living characters to paint,
When first thy pencil did those beauties give,
And breathing figures learnt from thee to live,
How did those prospects give my soul delight,
A new creation rushing on my sight?
Still, wond'rous youth! each noble path pursue; <...Read more

Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries,
For that which was lacking among you all, yet needed most, I bring;
A book I have made for your dear sake, O soldiers,
And for you, O soul of man, and you, love of comrades;
The words of my book nothing, the life of it everything;
A book separate, not link'd with the rest,...Read more

I'll say and maybe dream I have drawn content-
Seeing that time has frozen up the blood,
The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent-
From beauty that is cast out of a mould
In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,
Appears, but when we have gone is gone again,
Being more indifferent to our solitude ...Read more

I.
The rung wide
receiver forgets why

he set his keys on the football field.
Whose are they? he asks-a ringing

in his ear-while clenching
the green. As if on the edge

of a pool, he tilts his head to drain
water out of his canal.

It was like that, all the time,
...Read more

for Mari
There were carols on the kitchen radio, a late
cold night, entering the room
while straightening the blistered Navajo rug, I
remembered suddenly what the first eight notes
of hark, the herald angels sing felt like
vibrating through my body that first time-
I was eleven and unprepared,
I ...Read more

My ex-lover received it at seventeen
skiing the steep slope at Wintergreen called
Devil's Elbow. The early snowmelt along the Blue
Ridge had slipped the white limb of a birch

through the crust, jutted that camouflaged tip
into the center of the trail. He hit it, full speed,

flipped over his ski ...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

Love gives all its reasons
as if they were terms for peace.
Love is this but not that
that but not this.
Love as it always was.

But there is no peace in the mountain
cleft where the fruit bats scatter
from the light.
There is no peace in the hollow when
the heat snuffs night's blue ...Read more

One morning state police
escort us to your grave
the next my flight is canceled.

Maintenance issues breaking
out all over. You would speak
of a "grand theory," something

tying all this together, but
you had none yourself, none
that reached me then or now

as I drive your ...Read more

One moment take thy rest.
Out of mere nought in space
Beauty moved human breast
To tell in this far face
A dream in noonday seen,
Never to fade or pass;
A breath-time's mute delight;
A joy in flight:
The aught desire doth mean
Sighing, Alas!

About This Poem
"Alas" was ...Read more

The narrow clearing down to the river
I walk alone, out of breath
my body catching on each branch.
Small children maneuver around me.

Often, I want to return to my old body
a body I also hated, but hate less

given knowledge.
Sometimes my friends-my friends

who are always ...Read more

Before I watched you die, I watched the dying
falter, their hearts curled and purring in them

like kitfoxes asleep
beside their shadows, their eyes pawed out by the trouble

of their hunger. I was
humbling, Lord, like the taxidermist's

apprentice. I said
yes, and amen, like the...Read more

The children were asking
a thousand questions about why
the sky was blue and grass was green
when suddenly their tongues
were stilled by an answer they
never saw. Now silence rings
in their place so loud a stone
can hear it in Arkansas.
So why not the men inside
the sky who only hear the roar...Read more

Dead man's fingers-
short and still
or waving spindles
brain coral,
mountain coral
ground small-they
would be pebbles
if they weren't shards
hiding places
for trumpet
fish and crabs
live and dead coral
What is sand made of?
Who is to know
which is coral <...Read more

I turn on the radio and hear horses, girls becoming women after tragedy. Talk about dreams! His heart was covered in a thin shell the color of the moon, and when touched, I'd grow old. The best movies have a philosophy, Dorothy, after being subjected to witch-on-girl violence, is rescued. Someone hung himself on that set, a man, who loved...Read more