I always knew that Grandma’s grandfather crashed on the cliffs of Newfoundland, and that we are here because he climbed the waves atop a freezing rock and stayed there…

Hampi Resort, India   brushstrokes of wind   blue-gray cacti and the thick teak trees   honeymooners in their hammocks drinking tea that’s mostly milk   black cows white cows…

  No one goes downtown. I see an empty square and name it after you. In the yard of the house you used to live in, the flowers shed petals,…

Lower the shovel and flatten the ground. --Gerald Stern   Mostly, denial, the nerves in abeyance— add one day and a stoop sets in. I churn my shoulders to undo…

  On the beach the shark is dead: its marble eyes leak jelly, its underbelly, slashed, bleeds pinkly onto the sand and flies like copters circle round reporting on the…

For K.J. Baker   This is abroad where you die any age orienting your map. This is between shell shock and PTSD, the war the greatest generation served in, my…

  Was this one of the girls I knew those twenty years ago? I seek a word in Arabic for blue and find “azraq” and blood is “dam” and bird…

  Google the girl with the blue bra And you will find her lying, raw Forced over, knocked down on her  back Her legs upraised against attack From fully-clad helmeted…

  Someone says, we’re living through an age the ancient Greeks would understand, internecine, unrepairable as red ceramic shards. The famous poet calls the soldiers babykillers, says fuck them. It’s…

  setting forth     an ex- a present     position     point act     of exposing     state of being     exposed   displayed     disclosed wares     details     laid open disposed     of former     opposed for want     of…

Tr. from the Portuguese by Calvin Olsen   I see you do not want things to continue This way In this particular case We speak of forget-me-nots A flower about…

  We were walking past your dead grandfather’s house, and I left you as if through a door in the air. I wanted to tell you, but you were speaking…