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Selected Poems

Leaving The West

The first time I hear the voice is in the fall, when the larch trees have just begun to change color. I’m driving out of Washington’s Blue Mountains along Cloverland Road just above the Snake River. Cloverland is a series of hair-pin turns and S curves bordered by a sheer drop into a canyon full of snakes, sage, and yellow star thistle.

Old Maids

My aunt Eunice never married. I have not married either, and I think that perhaps we remained single for the same reason, though I may be wrong. Eunice never said why she hadn’t married, except in the joking way one replies to the curiosity of children.

Privacy

A twenty-year affair, a toothbrush, a religious cult

Curtains

My mother once told me that, during her labor with me in the living room of her Brooklyn apartment, she’d tugged on the long white drapes in her pain. The image of her on her knees, dark hair neatly tied back, mouth open, remains vivid to me.

Quitting

A two-headed dog, a restored farmhouse in Tuscany, a talking-stick circle

Selected Poems

Bikini

In 1960 I was one of the few people I knew who owned a bikini. They had been around for a while but were still considered fairly risqué. Mine was pink, was made of cotton, and tied around the neck.

Autobiography Of An Icon

Ghost Triangle

That winter, after Betse and I discovered we were infertile, I became fascinated by pearls. My passion for them resembled an addiction, though I hesitate to call it that. There was a ritual aspect to it, a heady anticipation, an urgency I didn’t always understand.