An unremarkable corner café—he sits across from you at a table where he has waited patient as a ruin all your life. Nothing is more   than symbol, even…

  Above the pecan grove, two curtains of rain, one turning purple, the other another of God’s interrogations, What makes you believe you are? Seen by the left eye, a…

  Sleek starlings flying low ++++over whitecaps on the bay ++++++++++remind me of Ortygia,   so far from where I am, ++++exactly where I wish ++++++++++to stroll the white stones…

  It’s night in a subdivision whose name fills your ears with forest, and you’re sitting in a gazebo whose ivied trellises you’ve never seen in this shade of streetlight,…

  Yes—cradle, then rain, sun, sand-box and rusted chain- link, baseball in the diamond by the playground, first base, first kiss, home plate, then heart- break, first house, black granite…

tr. by Peter Brown and Caroline Talpe   Dark, veiled lamps. A dark milk Filtering through the stretched Membrane. In the canal Motionless water shines. A fine Cover of mist…

Tr. from the French by Peter Brown and Caroline Talpe   The dawn instills its light into the blinds. I spread the slats and through the curved gap Observe the…

  It is sometimes necessary to walk barefoot along a moonlit riverbank on the sodden strip where water meets land to remind oneself that something in the mud remembers the…

  She who wields you gets a grip on her task and bears down to change one thing into another, like most everything used in the kitchen except for the…

  Isn’t it my good fortune in this world On a day when there is enough bird seed in the feeder And it has warmed up enough for them to…

  Cicadas taught me to speak in low humming before my mother taught me alphabet or verb— before I learned to bathe alone in the canal behind our house, my…

  I am at home, watching a movie when you arrive unannounced, barely visible—your frame filling the unlit doorway.   I haven’t seen you in weeks—perhaps I’ve never seen you,…