Poetry

July 16, 2003 In other places, slick, smooth plastic clatter across family formica tables, bright white bars and black divots so round and perfect they might hold plump orange caviar, a smattering of pepper and sea salt, or seat for pungent capers. But across the burroughs, in Far Rockaway, Bensonhurst,…

When serving birth Summon the womb Open every window every door to the house to the barn to the room Let them come on through those cold rains, rot-lonely flies all the waspers of this world Tell them now is the time And when your job is other when they’ve…

They’re called staves, right? Stave: as in, to break a thing by turning it inward as in, to stay, as in, don’t be afraid, my darling girl, be the strong one, hidden and planted, the underpinning around which all the rest gets wound

To whatever home you call home— a door, locked; a mother’s place; a family, that dream state—compare When you find the big stone rock, the one bigger than all that, put your skull face to her skull face, stand Still Let, what?—God, Time, Boredom—shade your eyes Then, with night-sight watch…