Oh what longing, my dear young friend Each prison night I dream of your smile— Kissing my sleeve, I imagine your hair My lips are bitter, my body icy…

  A swallow, a hazardous stretch of road A tall waterfall, heard through a long night Step quickly across a vanished river Wait for rain in the flutter of butterflies…

  The rift lake, too, refuses coherence of any sort. Its ice encircled by trees—dark though sloeless—   whose unleafed limbs yaw untroubled by snow in its own right dense…

  “You will get through this hard time. There will be other hard times.” —Siku   Harrow harder, asper. The rude heart must continue to blurt & bluster & batter.…

  is the closest you can get to God. When I was young I was in the habit of rolling up pages from the Quran and pushing them into my…

  If the morning scaffolds, then night prayers come. If years ago, Mother & Father ate only rice & beans, then we slept in one bunk bed & Saturdays were…

  Looking out at the world without words   or looking out at the world with words like empty lawn chairs, collapsible in the wind, you know one thing for…

  for ninety-nine cents / pulpy, stringy, filmy, fibrous   the first time we were alone / a texture only you have felt   after the dust speck inside you…

  —after Walking Man II and Three Men Walking II by Alberto Giacometti, The Art Institute of Chicago   I.   I’m not alone in this compulsion to touch, to…

  You have to squint these days to taste the berry in the blackberries. Still, you eat even the bad ones.   All because the date on the package has…

  A skillet crackles, a raw crescent And bit of butter becoming, Inevitably, a lone browned, curved Pungent thing, a scalding mouthful   Soon slipping down a throat: consumption Always…

  Flourish, unwashed, unpeeled, bouncy boys; grow, citizen-workers, clothed in good dirt— dearest ones, I place my hope in you— your green is king, in my garden. Chopped, you are…