Poetry Archive

collectibles / commotion open my old trunk, find my trinket ruins fish for vintage brushstrokes find that confession is a church is a cosmic captive here are my handfuls of stars this is an … [Read more...]

Education Don’t ask me to know your trees or the green statues of famous men. Don’t ask me to assume polite silence before gray old churches or to join in your search for the meaning of proud … [Read more...]

On defiance, as a verb All matter emits black body radiation on becoming thermal cavity at equilibrium with the void. There is ritual in the cleansing molten of burnish and shine, each turn of … [Read more...]

Cultivating the Space Between It’s the light in the sky that conjures the eye that transmits the heart that foots the thrill where humanity thrives. It’s the glow in the go that propels the … [Read more...]

excavation 1 came out of the dentist’s office and i’d lost the poem, half my mouth numb, the other half filled with the taste of stale metal had the bill in my hand less than a quarter … [Read more...]

What I Sought in Bucharest, Summer of 1990 I came to talk Plotinus, Ceausescu, revolution, was given Cioran and everything, everything happened in the cradle of that language where I first … [Read more...]

Before I Came Out Pastor Clack fitted me for a roomy chastity belt, so big that it held our church, my school and neighborhood. This belt hurt when I tried to move. One day, near the … [Read more...]

Homebody sometimes i am two people: me, and me but sadder. the space this second me inhabits is the space between the mind's eye and the smaller me of 1998 picking her way over a rocky … [Read more...]

Archaeology Each object that survives us That survives our consumptive affections Our blue-flame greed Balances in perfect Newtonian opposition There’s no removing the counterweights Even if … [Read more...]

the words the words appear like sunlight      visible lines of wind & dust luminous incantations of the Sacred Valley, of the Sedona desert I draw the tree … [Read more...]

If a Tree Falls in the Woods … Narrow an eye to a blade of scrutiny. See in a flash how a thing can cut. Imagine the heartwood without splitting the tree; the fallout splicing the atoms in … [Read more...]

THE BLUE OF THE FLAME "There is not a law under which any part of this universe is governed which does not come into play and is touched upon in these phenomena. There is no better, there is no … [Read more...]

Epigraph I dreamt Mary Shelley gave me her lover’s heart wrapped in paper    blood dried into shapes like shadow puppets    behind the … [Read more...]

Always My depression was never a pill, except when I swallowed it whole and allowed the smoke to meander up out of the orifice I once measured by its silences. My pills were never moonlight, … [Read more...]

In Calling Out Somewhere inside me my father is circling the fork of his spade digging the earth. I hold his workman's hankie and wipe his brow without his seeing. Behind, the lands he has … [Read more...]

My Mother Asks Me to Put Myself in My Father’s Shoes I wrapped him in the ocean so the waves could help him sleep, roll over him like seashells, resting while the world crashed. We built … [Read more...]

50 It’s a crowbar someone left on the side of the freeway after changing a flat tire at two a.m. No one knows how that bar worked its way to the middle of the lane where you are … [Read more...]

Chamomile A boy I know died/ and I don’t know what to make of it/ he is my first/ frailty/ Storm clouds gather/ this is good/ I need balance inside and out/ I burn an omelette/ I remember his … [Read more...]

Ada Lovelace Pays a Visit It’s all about ones and zeroes, she said, her eyes gleaming like a computer screen, her voice a comforting hum. Maybe someday you’ll understand what to do with … [Read more...]