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Poetry
Spanish Ballad
That barista, Mother, / with the dark-roast eyes / and the silver nail / through her left eyebrow, / who pulls the handle / of the espresso machine / with such imperial ennui / — Mom, does she not know / that she is killing me?
December 2013Fixing A Lamp
I pull the old cord from the base, / its black cloth rotted from the wires, / because my mother says this brass desk lamp / belonged to her great-grandmother
November 2013Selected Poems
— from “Special Problems in Vocabulary” | There is no single particular noun / for the way a friendship, / stretched over time, grows thin, / then one day snaps with a popping sound.
November 2013Kitchen Ghost
My husband killed himself in our kitchen, / a wide-open room with a forty-gallon barrel / of water standing close to the old woodstove.
October 2013Selected Poems
— from “With That Moon Language” | Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to / them, “Love me.” / Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise / someone would call the cops.
October 2013Twilight Meditation Without Dog
Late-afternoon light floods the darkening sunroom. / Looking out the window, not sad, not happy, I / and the ghost of my old dog breathe in, breathe out
October 2013Selected Poems
— from “I Stand in the Doorway” | Sometimes when you say goodbye you know it’s goodbye for keeps. / You touch your lips to her cheek, or you squeeze his hand & walk off. / What else can you do?
October 2013Thinking
Don’t you wish they would stop, / all the thoughts swirling around in your head like / bees in a hive, dancers tapping their way across the stage?
September 2013The Encounter At Twenty, 1966
The day that it happened, / my teacher had written crap on the bottom of my first poem. / I wanted to throw it into the Hudson / where it would sink with its no / under the gulls, the garbage scows, and the litter.
September 2013
The Fox Skull
My middle girl found it long after the crows / had picked away the eyes, the gums, / the supple stretch of tongue
August 2013
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