Writing :: Poetry
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Signposts
Three streets ago if I had said turn left
we would have been there by now.
I think this is my fault and I think
you must have seen the signpost, too.
Categories: Poetry, Uncategorized Poems
Before You Meet Catullus
He sat four hours in an airport
writing his brother’s elegy. Missed his plane.
You need to know these things. He loves
his girl, will sleep with a goat if it slips him
a promising line or two.
Categories: Poetry, Variations on Catullus
What I Promised
I am afraid of you
leaving me, forgetting our mornings
in a silent kitchen staring together
out a window while in the toaster
bread blackens and burns.
Categories: Poetry, Variations on Catullus
If I & You => We
Corvine, we are going where
sweet-bruised oranges, saplings.
Not, Corvine, these words:
marmalade, peel cake, crepes.
Categories: Poetry, Uncategorized Poems
Swans on a Still Lake
Seeing you by the painting, I wanted to rip a feather
from one of the swans, dip it into the inky lake and scrawl
down your chest Have you ever been to Paris
in the fall, when the sidewalks are covered in mud
and the boulanger drops his prices by half?
Categories: Poetry, Uncategorized Poems
People Want to Know the Truth
So this is it: Dad was cremated.
We kept the ashes on the dining room table
next to the bills. We ate on the old couch
until the new couch was delivered;
then we ate on the new couch.
Categories: Poetry, Uncategorized Poems
Wisconsin Haying
I stood with my uncles in the dark maw,
watching the slow creep of the sagging elevator,
learned to stack, cross stack, tight pack
the hay.
Categories: Poetry, Uncategorized Poems
Epitaph
I buried my sparrow
at the base of an olive tree--
young, green--I hope
the trunk will grow
Categories: Poetry, Variations on Catullus
Marking Territory
I love him, you know. He’s a goat
that eats the leaves off a prize rosebush,
stinks up the garden, and butts his head
softly against your thigh when you appear
with a stick in hand.
Categories: Poetry, Variations on Catullus