Poem

We think of hidden in a white dressamong the folded linens and sachetsof well-kept cupboards, or just out of sightsending jellies and notes with no addressto all the wondering Amherst…

You Don't Know What Love Isbut you know how to raise it in melike a dead girl winched up from a river. How towash off the sludge, the stench of…

You have forty-nine days betweendeath and rebirth if you're a Buddhist.Even the smallest soul could swimthe English Channel in that timeor climb, like a ten-month-old child,every step of the Washington…

So when my proud city spreadher gypsy skirts, I reentered;she burned a greater, constant light.Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly- I tell you,every tenderness I have ever knownhas been nothingbut thwarted…

After Adam ZagajewskiI am child to no one, mother to a few,wife for the long haul.On fall days I am happywith my dying brethren, the leaves,but in spring my head…

Some sayit was a pearEve ate.Why else the shapeof the womb,or of the celloWhose single song is grieffor the parent tree?Why else the fruit itselftawny and sweetwhich your loverover breakfastlets…

An upright abutment in the mouthof the Willis Avenue bridgea beige Honda leaps the dividerlike a steel gazelle inescapablesleek leather boots on the pavementrat-a-tat-tat best intentionsgoing down for the third…

Be who you are and will belearn to cherishthat boisterous Black Angel that drives youup one day and down anotherprotecting the ploace where your power risesrunning like hot bloodfrom the…

Billie Holiday's burned voicehad as many shadows as lights,a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano,the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.(Now you're cooking, drummer to bass, magic spoon, magic…