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Poetry
My Stepsister’s Music
When my mother’s third husband took me / thirty years ago to see his daughter / from his first marriage / smash the cymbals / with the high-school marching band, / he told me to be nice afterward because / she was “slow”
January 2007New Weather
There is no more horse, / smack, H, tar, heroin, / china. No more oxy, percs, / Percocet, Vicodin, vikings, / v for victory. There is / no more coke, blow, / white, cane.
January 2007First Breath Last Breath
When a baby boy is born / and the midwife / holds him up / as he takes / his first breath, / Place him over / the Mother’s face / so when the baby exhales / his first breath on Earth / the Mother breathes it.
December 2006
Infant Pneumonia
She wouldn’t suck. She wouldn’t cuddle. / Her eyes rolled toward me, then away again. / I hugged her to my chest and ran / from the doctor’s office to the X-ray lab.
December 2006Saddam Hussein Is Writing Poetry In Solitary Confinement
I laughed when I told my friend: / Saddam is writing poems! / No matter how down and out you are, there’s always / poetry! I snorted. / When the last rotten plank / in the basement of your mind has fallen through, / pray that a thin lifeline of words may sustain you.
December 2006
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