Everyone knows the joke (with the exception of cultures who don’t know dogs): it’s always the clever boy who tells it. The others gather and he asks “Why does a dog lick its balls?” First the boys suspect a serious lesson, they smell the memory of school, then the possibilities come, answers they know aren’t […]
I’m not good with machines– you’d know this by looking at me– me, who owned once only old cars: When I draw a machine up by a rope after throwing it over a cliff– see me draw it up, that engine, hand under hand from the cliff I threw you over, yes, I draw you […]
in poetry the poet, or whomever has a stick and sand available, may tell the story of a grain of salt, yes that grain of salt, that escapee from bubbling water or Tecate beer, which is made for salt and lemon, or from a bad experience with a chicken doomed for the grill, the salt […]
Has there ever been a poem about sanding mold and mildew from an old white, screened porch? asked the poetry teacher. And why would there be? a student of poetry asked the poetry teacher, who, the student thought, should be able to answer such a question, a question that tore to the heart of the […]
Today I became a snake with hair, in a such a state we must wonder about sleep and figures, hair, for example, as I rise from a hole and confront the day. Sure, when they saw me there was wonder, but I had to wonder also, speaking of appearances, about their own hair, their own […]
Steve (approaching): You? Matt (relieved at the interruption): I’m departing for . . . Mdala: Another coffee, thank you. Anne (enters): Matt. Mdala. You? Mdala: Thank you. And two white butterflies break or mangle the heavier air beneath the trees, above the grass, soundless, rising, now falling, slapping with their wings Steve brings coffee. Anne: […]
That sun on the carpet is like a tortoise composed of light, like something the poet forgot and can only recall as a creeping vapor, gravity-flattened, soon to withdraw or crawl under a shelf, like a low white sound sustained, and the luminous dust motes are like little planes on maneuver, like gnats, flaming atoms, […]
In that same quiet of the sky the mood changed with crows passing blacking toward evening. At that same place in the sky I watch the sun, I watch the children reach for the trees. Clouds from ash, clouds from cracking stone, clouds from skin and the eye. Crows and Rain coming. That same place […]
yesterday I came into the house smelling of gas and memory; the smell of grass cuttings, of course, recalls older days, days with little form to them; they’re filled with objects: poems, turntables, shoes, the sound of doors opening, bandages, stomping horses, gift boxes. I’m not good with machines, though they are hard to break; […]
yesterday I strung my first guitar with the help of a friend who had his own to string, an instrument for advanced artists and looked it he said he hated stringing guitars and I told him it had to do with the fear of those things that might garrote us, the human fear of sharp […]
when they took our pictures and printed them the artists would come (we never saw them, so I can only imagine) and put the images into bracings of flowers, cut paper and foil frames, very much like glitter or leaf-like aluminum, painted arrangements of color and shine they’d cut as closely to the edges of […]
my dog’s old face follows me to the place he’s buried under the white pine in the back of the house and I kneel and wonder who has visited other than the squirrels, slugs, and deer here where everything important happens I imagine what that old dog’s face must be thinking will I have to […]
It was on a Wednesday when I woke up early and found monkeys on my arms, small monkeys with red, yellow, and white faces, and black eyes and little furry throats rabid with chatter and fingers not much thicker and longer than the individual letters of printed words. The cashier asked me what was making […]
this poem was begun at 7:49 and this morning I’m a cow or a fish for the first time, starting over, wearing man shoes imaging this at 7:49 can be compared to flying which would make me a bird or something lighter, forced by the wind above the cold smoke stacks to make Os and […]
the poem I wanted to write drew a tree, a mountain, ice, and a man who might have been my brother but he was really watching the river rise and the clang of the anchors– he watches the anchors rise and how the water sworls muddy brown in the center, as if the fish below […]
