Browse Topics
Romantic Love
Torpedoes D’Amour
While my contemporaries wailed in the throes of romantic and copulatory obsession, I suspected that every form of adult intimacy, sex especially, was less like the delivery of a vital and sophisticated pleasure than it was a sleek torpedo you never really saw coming until you were struck broadside and blown to smithereens.
May 2016
Garlic In My Ear
In our culture, when you have a medical problem, you visit a doctor, who writes you a prescription; then you drive to a pharmacy and pay thirty-two dollars for a medication. There are few surprises or slip-ups. But if you decide to single-handedly reconnect with a lost ancient lineage of herbal wisdom, you may end up with a short spear of garlic bearing down on your eardrum.
April 2016
Selected Poems
— from “For This” | It is for this / we have been torn / and mended / and torn again.
January 2016Don’t Call It Vino
A man in his kitchen must exhibit dexterity with a chef’s knife. That’s essential. He should also possess a devil-may-care nonchalance around the spice rack and a cunning knowledge of various cheeses. Good, you’ve sailor-knotted your apron. That’s important. You are also wearing oven mitts. A little excessive, but she might think it’s cute. She has a sloshing glass of vino in her hand and a grin on her face. Excellent!
January 2016
Bugs
All day I fought the HIV virus, a bug that was taking men — or mostly men — from the world, and at night I found light-brown, circular bugs on my pillow. I never crushed them; I lifted them delicately into a trash bin.
January 2016
The University Of Men
First Susan got engaged to an archeologist, / who took her to excavate dinosaur bones in Tibet. / At night in their double sleeping bag, / while he catalogued her body parts, / Suze discovered her inner Tibetan.
December 2015
Morning Song
Morning: fire of purple princess blossoms, / toddler pedaling furiously on a tricycle, / and the man unlocking his fix-it shop on the corner / with its hand-painted warning sign: / ALL MY STUFF IS NOT WORTH YOUR LIFE.
May 2015Selected Poems
— from “Storm On Galilee” | What’s instructive is not / that he walked on water / but that he seemed so unharassed / by the possibility of complete / and utter catastrophe.
May 2015A Kiss For Mrs. Sissle
We did come upon a low cave, ten or so feet to the back, but there was nothing inside except empty beer bottles and a white paper bag shaped like a cat. So we sat like castaways at its entrance, knees touching, and watched the hourglass glitter of the moon on the black surface of the ocean. That was all. It was my first experience of nervous teenage heaven, and I doubted I would ever know anything so fragile and sublime again.
April 2015
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