Going to School in Finland in 1972
When the child turned seven
the mother said:
“Child, go to school”
and the child did.
And at one in the afternoon
the mother said to the child:
“Child, welcome …
Poetry
-
-
Open Field, Zero Miles From Hell
openfield
filmmaker weeds strawberry fields
hear a flame red upright piano with its metronome ticking
push “play” on the remote
“relocate”
be teen surrogate traceing camps’ crackled mudflatsGhost Stories (to be read to her child, at night)
She was watching from the window
Arms out, hanging from the ledge
Reaching toward me—
Your uncle was still an infant—
And when she stepped inside
I saw that I …Grounded
I.
The teenaged girl’s parents
knew not to wait till the night before prom
to tell her she couldn’t go.
They started watching her weeks earlier,
wiping lipstick off the …Still Life with Ivory
If I could move I’d close the shutters he left open. I’d trap the windowsill blackbird in the house.
If I could move I’d take the pears—almost rotten as usual—from their …
Another Beginning
In the beginning, all the world was America.
Sharp rainy seasons, skies scaled with mica.
Bright wind. Brittle lakes. The air would flinch
with lightning and a flex of nameless …Initial of Creation, and / The Exponent of Earth—
In that direction we
Left Pai on foot two days ago, our guide and …After Learning of a Friend’s Suicide, We Drive to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park
In trees along the Bath Road rookery,
a siege of herons broods. Their long necks kink.
Their nests clump bare branches like flood debris.
Settling with a click in icy …Fretwork
By the time Mother took me to her birthplace—Bequia—
I was a fifth-grade wordsmith in a first-grader’s body.
H-o-m-e—too easy—was off my spelling list althoughI didn’t know what home meant. …
The Difference Between Enlightened and a Lightening Bug
Which is to say the light we make with each other is beguiling—like watching fire, we can’t seem to turn away. Even when we feel burning, not a folly, but …
Then on the Shore of the Wide World
The city was in great panic, neighbors
crushing under neighbors, making a wave
of worry cresting an undercurrent
of resolve, which seemed natural because
in my dream a river marked …Postcard to Miller from Bernheim’s Forest
Whose woods these are I certainly know.
His name is everywhere, and without that name
on signs, envelopes, cars, jackets, and fliers
these third-growth woods would be no-growth.
A century …