No matter what the it
it often starts small, unannounced
undetected or unappreciated
It starts to grow or change in
some way, pushed or pulled by us
or self-induced
“Little Miss Black Hole,” “Girls” and “Why Are All the Poets Sad?”
She hid all these years
aloof, afraid of the camera
knowing it would add ten pounds
to an already unmeasurable amount of mass
No wonder she kept hidden
in support groups with
bigfoot and the lochness
“trou au centre de la terre,” “Black Hole” and “French Lessons”
Inside Notre Dame is a black hole
where worshippers find a secret passageway
to grace
After the fiery birth, sodden mementos:
A cross,
A crown of thorns
Sculpted stone and paintings
The smell of charred faith
“Self Portrait with Georgia on My Mind,” “Growing up Townie” and “Believer”
And no, not the state, though the state
of the state is cause to fret,
no, O’Keeffe, I say, and we
are painting red poppies. We
are sliding crimson beyond the edges
of our canvases and we
“A Rainy Day at Newman’s Grounds,” “Headed Home” and “Derby Days”
The raindrops dribble down the shopfront panes
while back behind the counter the barista drips
her own creation into earthenware cups.
He’s always liked the tables here, the way
they’re cut with thick pine tops and sturdy legs
two inches thick, like they were made to last
“On Trial,” “Canzonet” and “Non Dolet”
In the bedlam
of bed-land,
happy as babies,
active as rabbits,
me sky-father
you earth-mother;
“Can Poetry Matter?,” “A Brown Study” and “Away from It All”
Left the wine importer’s tasting,
denied a restorative cup of joe,
I passed out on a Manhattan subway platform.
The ambulance drivers lugged me
me up to the street, where I signed and was
allowed to go. Before wine the arid years
“She Swims Like a Fish,” “Penance and Reconciliation” and “On the Fritz”
A fish taught me to swim.
He wore a woven crown of kelp upon his head—
he was, he told me, the king of the sea.
He found me standing on the sandy shore
and invited me to join him in the waves.
This really happened.
“We Are All Jacks, Yucca Flats, 1962,” “Embracing Sisyphus” and “Snapping selfies on Lake Champlain”
The silence of the dry lake bed is broken by the slow
countdown of a megaphone. Flashes of light ignite the
world white to uncomprehending eyes. As the shock
front cools into visibility, an enormous fireball grows
and grows before flaming out like the head of some
leviathan matchstick.
“Absence Under the Eaves,” “Elfride’s Father” and “The Book”
folks rarely stopped by our flat
high under the eaves
maybe a bill collector
or a nosey child welfare woman
out of breath
bringing with her bound files
and a jiggle of fat under her chin
“My Friend Feminism,” “11 Years” and “To Hygeia”
My friend Feminism and I
enjoy long walks on the beach together
But there is a line in the sand that always approaches
where I must let go of her hand
because I don’t think my friend Feminism
understands how she can’t wear all her faces at once
“Horseman Passing By,” “Looking Upon a Photo of Con Colbert” and “On Irish Accents”
Picture me,
as I am,
propped
on these ancient stones
to watch the gloaming
come lazily in.
“Birthday, No Birth Day,” “Games Few Win” and “Paddington Bear”
birthday of a young man
showing him sights
events cold and crude
feelings heated and complex
mustafa’s
a youngster
“When Looking Out the Back Window,” “After the Quarrel” and “In the Pause”
at night I can’t see the owl I hear
but a faint outline
of the sandbox on the porch
a playground for unwanted crickets
who nestle to the bottom
waiting to surprise me one summer day
“Really Ready to Rumble?”
Made my bones playing ledgeball on the block, but during college
no taxi’d drive back into the Southside snatch-‘n-grab boarded up
storefronts below Chicago’s elevated trains. Hertz’d have none of it;
“A Grimoire Ajar” and “Moving Day”
A candle is lit,
Pink flesh melting smooth at first,
But as its silk ribbons
Cascade from its frozen bluffs,
It withers as its wick slowly
Bores deep into its heart.
“At the Mercy of My Own Forgetting,” “The Rent I Pay” and “By the Dead Purple Lady”
declares the forgetting man
under the florescent lights
his face shadowless
in a shadowed world
that he knows where it is
once and for all
“BEYOND” and “Beyond”
I found the answers
when the sky was
layered in pink, lavender,
and celestial blue.
I am a medicine woman
though my breasts have
never produced milk, and
my womb is barren.
I’m not bad seed.