Bears Repeating
What is there— other than the bear hold—held up in cold nights as example, other than the body of bears, waiting in caves— the opposite of caving in. Nakedness…
The Old Masters
for Gloria Emerson We were sitting on the back porch when the news came on the radio: Saddam’s tanks racing across the desert into Kuwait. “That’s it,” she said,…
Is Writing Helpful?
hellish bullshit . . . men love it men stupid as cows, pigs —Ikkyu, tr. Stephen Berg After telling each other some awful stuff, the three of us were…
A Dawn Chorus: A Portfolio of Poems in Celebration of Jennifer Barber’s Twenty-Seven Years of Editing Salamander
A few years ago there suddenly appeared a bird’s nest in the hydrangea outside my front door. A little miracle, assembled almost overnight, it had speckled blue eggs within.…
Portent with Moonset & Blackbirds
For a long time I wanted to drink a cup of winter, to become tipsy on early dark & longer starshine. The thinning light my favorite ether. These days…
The Nightingale Floor
We could use some new memories to replace permanent shadows left by people when that next morning the sun rose in Japan as if nothing untoward was happening down…
Nothing More Now
There’s nothing more now but vacant bodies, the equations of being buried. I turn around: everyone is up to their shoulders in sand, they strain to turn their heads,…
Goodbye Blackbird
I had this ridiculous pang of nostalgia for Italian bureaucracy so I got a cheap flight to Genoa and then a taxi to the Municipal Hall in Corso Torino…
How to Partner a Runner
You will never know what he thinks about while he runs, as music muffles the city’s roar of evening, yawn of morning. As he smells burnt leaves in autumn,…
from The Pink Series
Pink Blossom Born in full bloom I grew along the feminine arc— pink diminishment & pink despair pinched back & pedestaled thin into air but even the invisible could…
Broken Fridge
For three weeks the fridge has been whining like a dog. It must be the freezer fan, or the compressor: either way, it’s screwed. I have three months left…