All summer, we feared to look at her, our bovine Tiresias. Marked by pinkeye, with crystal ball eyes she sniffed her way   across pastures thinned by drought. My…

  Though we'd wish for a straight approach, dying’s a tyro, squats in its delivery, ball   in both hands plopped on the lane. For a moment dumb there, it…

  It was like dying. Or terror falling from the skies in Guernica. Or the yearning of prisoners, how she fell out of herself, sometimes, forgetting her name. The feeling…

  Translation by Yun Wang   Soft grass and flat sedge freshen after rain My horse trots on a sandy road free of dust When will I pack up to…

  Translation by Yun Wang   The wind flies fast clouds low over the water The sky clears over swallows nesting at pond-side lodge Burdened with illness Lord Shen could…

  Tomorrow someone will come for me. Or maybe not tomorrow. Later. Who knows when? I don’t mind waiting. It beats doing something. Doing has always been my undoing. Not…

  The ostrich will give itself its own name, anoint itself in pearls, stare in the mirror as it dresses and undresses its body.   The ostrich enjoys a spectacle,…

  I found out about his death over Facebook Messenger, some sad-face emoji staring back at me from the screen. Who does that? I wonder now. No call. No text.…

  I am a root:                wishing itself a bird. I am fence:                inside a temple. I…

  Joe never learned to skate, kept falling down, busted   his nose once, got blood all over his winter coat.   He was big for his age, carried his…

  Set off by indigo and right angles Chagall’s cow appears to know something.  He regards me with a familiarity as he tilts his beveled head back.  There is no…

  Translation by Judy Katz-Levine   I live sitting, one who is an angel in the hands of a barber, holding a beer mug with deep grooves arc of the belly…