All My Pretty Ones
Father, this year’s jinx rides us apart Where you followed our mother to her cold slumber; A second shock boiling its stone to your heart, Leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber You from
Love Letter Written In A Burning Building
I am in a crate, the crate that was ours, Full of white shirts and salad greens, The icebox knocking at our delectable knocks, And I wore movies in my eyes, And you wore
Cigarettes And Whiskey And Wild, Wild Women
(from a song) Perhaps I was born kneeling, Born coughing on the long winter, Born expecting the kiss of mercy, Born with a passion for quickness And yet, as things progressed, I learned early
Her Kind
I have gone out, a possessed witch, Haunting the black air, braver at night; Dreaming evil, I have done my hitch Over the plain houses, light by light: Lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
If you danced from midnight To six A. M. who would understand? The runaway boy Who chucks it all To live on the Boston Common On speed and saltines, Pissing in the duck pond,
The Fury Of Rainstorms
The rain drums down like red ants, Each bouncing off my window. The ants are in great pain And they cry out as they hit As if their little legs were only Stitche don
Crossing The Atlantic
We sail out of season into on oyster-gray wind, Over a terrible hardness. Where Dickens crossed with mal de mer In twenty weeks or twenty days I cross toward him in five. Wraped in
Live
Live or die, but don’t poison everything… Well, death’s been here For a long time It has a hell of a lot To do with hell And suspicion of the eye And the religious
Elizabeth Gone
1. You lay in the nest of your real death, Beyond the print of my nervous fingers Where they touched your moving head; Your old skin puckering, your lungs’ breath Grown baby short as
Us
I was wrapped in black Fur and white fur and You undid me and then You placed me in gold light And then you crowned me, While snow fell outside The door in diagonal
The Wifebeater
There will be mud on the carpet tonight And blood in the gravy as well. The wifebeater is out, The childbeater is out Eating soil and drinking bullets from a cup. He strides bback
Housewife
Some women marry houses. It’s another kind of skin; it has a heart, A mouth, a liver and bowel movements. The walls are permanent and pink. See how she sits on her knees all
Words
Be careful of words, Even the miraculous ones. For the miraculous we do our best, Sometimes they swarm like insects And leave not a sting but a kiss. They can be as good as
Said The Poet To The Analyst
My business is words. Words are like labels, Or coins, or better, like swarming bees. I confess I am only broken by the sources of things; As if words were counted like dead bees
A Story For Rose On The Midnight Flight To Boston
Until tonight they were separate specialties, Different stories, the best of their own worst. Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy’s Laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first Story. Someday,