Thomas Lux
Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down
As you descend, slowly, falling faster past You this snow, Ghostly, some flakes bio- Luminescent (you plunge, And this lit snow doesn’t land At your feet but keeps falling below You): single-cell-plant chains, shreds
Unlike, For Example, The Sound Of A Riptooth Saw
gnawing through a shinbone, a high howl Inside of which a bloody, slashed-by-growls note Is heard, unlike that Sound, and instead, its opposite: a barely sounded Sound (put your nuclear ears On for it,
Plague Victims Catapulted Over Walls Into Besieged City
Early germ Warfare. The dead Hurled this way look like wheels In the sky. Look: there goes Larry the Shoemaker, barefoot, over the wall, And Mary Sausage Stuffer, see how she flies, And the
Motel Seedy
The artisans of this room, who designed the lamp base (a huge red slug with a hole Where its heart should be) or chose this print Of a butterscotch sunset, Must have been abused
The Man Into Whose Yard You Should Not Hit Your Ball
each day mowed And mowed his lawn, his dry quarter acre, The machine slicing a wisp From each blade’s tip. Dust storms rose Around the roar: 6:00 P. M., every day, Spring, summer, fall.
"I Love You Sweatheart"
A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A
Lucky
One sweet pound of filet mignon Sizzles on the roadside. Let’s say a hundred yards below The buzzard. The buzzard Sees no cars or other buzzards Between the mountain range due north And the
A Library Of Skulls
Shelves and stacks and shelves of skulls, a Dewey Decimal number inked on each unfurrowed forehead. Here’s a skull Who, before he lost his fleshy parts And lower bones, once Walked beside a river
Refrigerator, 1957
More like a vault you pull the handle out And on the shelves: not a lot, And what there is (a boiled potato In a bag, a chicken carcass Under foil) looking dispirited, Drained,
Torn Shades
How, in the first place, did They get torn-pulled down hard Too many times: to hide a blow, Or sex, or a man In stained pajamas? The tear blade-shaped, Serrated, in tatters. And once,
A Little Tooth
Your baby grows a tooth, then two, And four, and five, then she wants some meat Directly from the bone. It’s all Over: she’ll learn some words, she’ll fall In love with cretins, dolts,
Virgule
What I love about this little leaning mark Is how it divides Without divisiveness. The left Or bottom side prying that choice up or out, The right or top side pressing down upon Its
The Road That Runs Beside The River
follows the river as it bends Along the valley floor, Going the way it must. Where water goes, so goes the road, If there’s room (not in a ravine, Gorge), the river On your
A Kiss
One wave falling forward meets another wave falling Forward. Well-water, Hand-hauled, mineral, cool, could be A kiss, or pastures Fiery green after rain, before The grazers. The kiss like a shoal of fish whipped
Gorgeous Surfaces
They are, the surfaces, gorgeous: a master Pastry chef at work here, the dips and whorls, The wrist-twist Squeezes of cream from the tube To the tart, sweet bleak sugarwork, needlework Toward the perfect
Henry Clay's Mouth
Senator, statesman, speaker of the House, Exceptional dancer, slim, Graceful, ugly. Proclaimed, before most, slavery An evil, broker Of elections (burned Jackson For Adams), took a pistol ball in the thigh In a duel,
He Has Lived In Many Houses
furnished rooms, flats, a hayloft, A tent, motels, under a table, Under an overturned rowboat, in a villa (briefly) but not, As yet, a yurt. In these places He has slept, eaten, Put his