Quiet Corner
1. Once a camel now a dog, my bladder marks my way to the toilet. Parkinson’s paralyzes my friend’s legs and larynx. The film of Alzheimer’s clouds a colleague who, at parties, recited Beowulf. I read about the poet who puts his face between a woman’s thighs, not knowing she’s …
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Diagnosis
I’ve joined the widow now who holds her breath and wears blue gloves to change hotel sheets with sets she brings from home, then leaves behind on mornings she flies out. I’ve joined him too, the lawyer who unscrews his toilet seats when summer grandsons weep and wave goodbye. The …
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Achromatopsia
Colors hiding in the fields. Having fled my eyes in a sudden mutiny. A revolution rare among visual glitches. City rendered sad, a cold faded etching. Egg yolks the color of cream. Blood stains uncarnadined. Startled birds white on a gray laurel hedge. Went to sleep with the reds and …
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Elegy with Steam
When I was sick with a head cold, my head full of pressure, my father would soak a washcloth in hot water, then ball it up, ring it out. He would open it above my head, then place it against my face like a second skin, the light around me …
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because horse is the closest i can get to it
after Jack Gilbert the horse in my mind knows the moon well enough to not need to speak to it when i try to talk to horses i watch their feet aware of their weight i try to feel my own a horse knows when …
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[SPECULUM] ENVY
I was jealous of my brother’s race car bed and jealous of my neighbor’s swing set. In a memory, a house across the street is knocked down by a yellow construction vehicle and I watch from my uncle’s lap where we sit in the attic. He has a penis and …
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Chemistry
We were side by side in chemistry. Hands touched the same beaker, still, no reaction. I remember your cheeks were warm streaks. We learned about the water cycle. I knew all about it. Rising heat and condensation changed the course of thundering, rainfall. But I didn’t brag much, when we …
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Basho’s Death Poem, New York City
Sick on a journey my dreams wander the withered fields – Basho In an old notebook were the beginnings of a poem about Basho’s last poem, the one he composed while he died. In the notes, the speaker walks from 31st Street to 17th in Manhattan and remembers Basho’s lines. …
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The Devotions
Sneezing and shiner-eyed in an entire landscape ripped by wind and today I wrestle every negative arriving my inbox while finches feast on suet, rubbing round heads to each other, to glued seed. March is and did and has just …
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I Loved Lucy
I wanted to be like Lucy—trapped on the IRT with a loving cup stuck upside down on my head— and not get mugged. To steal John Wayne’s footprints from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre without remorse, then bunk with Ethel for a whole week, mindless of half-naked show girls, the fact that …
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