Passing Out
The doctor fingers my bruise. “Magnificent,” he says, “black At the edges and purple Cored.” Seated, he spies for clues, Gingerly probing the slack Flesh, while I, standing, fazed, pull For air, losing the
Another Song
Words go on travelling from voice To voice while the phones are still And the wires hum in the cold. Now And then dark winter birds settle Slowly on the crossbars, where huddled They
M. Degas Teaches Art & Science At Durfee Intermediate School Detroit, 1942
He made a line on the blackboard, One bold stroke from right to left Diagonally downward and stood back To ask, looking as always at no one In particular, “What have I done?” From
Picture Postcard From The Other World
Since I don’t know who will be reading This or even if it will be read, I must Invent someone on the other end Of eternity, a distant cousin laboring Under the same faint
Gin
The first time I drank gin I thought it must be hair tonic. My brother swiped the bottle From a guy whose father owned A drug store that sold booze In those ancient, honorable
The Dead
A good man is seized by the police And spirited away. Months later Someone brags that he shot him once Through the back of the head With a Walther 7.65, and his life Ended
Holy Day
Los Angeles hums A little tune Trucks down The coast road For Monday Market Packed with small faces Blinking in the dark. My mother dreams By the open window. On the drainboard The gray
I Sing The Body Electric
People sit numbly at the counter Waiting for breakfast or service. Today it’s Hartford, Connecticut More than twenty-five years after The last death of Wallace Stevens. I have come in out of the cold
The Red Shirt
“…his poems that no one reads anymore become dust, wind, nothing, Like the insolent colored shirt he bought to die in.” -Vargas Llosa If I gave 5 birds Each 4 eyes I would be
For The Country
THE DREAM This has nothing to do with war Or the end of the world. She Dreams there are gray starlings On the winter lawn and the buds Of next year’s oranges alongside This
Any Night
Look, the eucalyptus, the Atlas pine, The yellowing ash, all the trees Are gone, and I was older than All of them. I am older than the moon, Than the stars that fill my
The Water's Chant
Seven years ago I went into The High Sierras stunned by the desire To die. For hours I stared into a clear Mountain stream that fell down Over speckled rocks, and then I Closed
Wisteria
The first purple wisteria I recall from boyhood hung On a wire outside the windows Of the breakfast room next door At the home of Steve Pisaris. I loved his tall, skinny daughter, Or
The Drunkard
from St. Ambrose He fears the tiger standing in his way. The tiger takes its time, it smiles and growls. Like moons, the two blank eyes tug at his bowels. “God help me now,”
Once
Hungry and cold, I stood in a doorway On Delancey Street in 1946 As the rain came down. The worst part is this Is not from a bad movie. I’d read Dos Passos’ USA