To defend José Lezama Lima is a right
defend him from God and from the hell
of majuscules and luck
stiff-necks and influxes
of the azure
is family style, is by the book.
Is none of my bid'ness.
They have a joy-free smoke,
a homemade drink.
They came from the four corners of the country
from remote places, walled off, cut off
and secluded from civilization,
practically removed from the map,
people of many clans, customs, and cultures
6. The Protesters: massed in the streets,
shouting, lifting signs high in the air,
all to no avail. It was over—they just
did not know.
Jim Dandy takes his place in the soup queue,
Huck Finn just behind, and they
laryngitis whisper: it ain’t worth being
civilized, advertised, mesmerized,
They were young.
Maybe not the brightest.
But among the most intrepid.
They were not Hitler youth.
Their motto wasn’t “Blood and Honor.”
They turned the torture zone into a tourist site
the torturers all got jobs showing busloads
of foreign schoolkids where the tor
tures used to take place.
Curbside beers, meals of tramp stew,
collapse a minister’s graven idol imagery,
diminish metaphor and the morning.
Rancor falls, random as a star.
I have no sense of the way home.
I became certain of silence, its
speech more relevant amid my
open hands releasing what was
learned among irrelevant
histories
But we remember also the marches
against the wars of horror and shattered bones
who would cry out against Napalm
the burning of villages, not just
one who prophesied in the '60's train
but many friends, many friends
she adored the aroma of nicotine on ripped fabric and
the appealing white-stains on abandoned evening gowns
these new signs became
her own innovative Rorschach tests
important is how, despite your contempt
-ous gaze at the universe, you won’t take
the logical step of slashing your belly while
a courtier-for-hire ensures the dance of your
head down the steps as it hops down towards
the River Danube, once a long-standing frontier
At the afternoon concert, the parade and the pyrotechnics
at the arboretum, will the fanfare feel genuine?
and I pull a Hart Crane, and leap,
and my body dissolves, just a bit
of brine in the expanse of the Atlantic,
and my memories spread,
oil slick across the surface of the wake,
"Anyone who wants to fight me all the time"
is more important to me than my wife. But there is no one left to fight
and no one knows me and I know no one well. That's good,
"there is more space between people than I'd ever dared to hope."
They come from underneath the
bridge; at least that’s what
someone said, and I’ve seen
their cardboard condos and
fresh air laundry alight on
the wind. I get startled
after three surgeries to get good margins
after a summer of sleepless nights and worrisome days
i remember i sat across from my wife
in the legendary vegas diner
with a dumb smile on my face
All the spare parts to rarify
They really ice the migraine dead
Doozey up and explode coffee earrings
Superstitions and the perfect Rorschach bandage
Breathtaking, route-faking, peace-making
the one the old sketch artist
is still dreaming of
with his eyes closed
calling her "daughter"
calling her "dragonfly"
Watch, he says:
my prey will come to me.
Fish were slipping back
to the garden, hoping
to emerge as something else.
They were snapped up,
Tell me about the heft of righteousness
in the hand, the percussive wish
to draw blood. Recount the wince
savored on the palate, the sob
The days of slavery are passé, which signals the end
to empires & all their indentured servants called
CEO’s (yes), plus housewives, teachers,
& duly elected politicians, plus blood diamonds
& bank notes tied to the bomb, the bomb squad,
you are quivering
in sanitary hostility
on a red red face.
You are a vanishing drain
of attention.
One Trump supporter prays to a 6' cardboard cut-out of his hero each morning as he leaves the house. No one can pinpoint when this happened. They are hyphenated anti-Americans.
The dream of a lake surrounding a
lake is the dream of a fried egg
resting on your face; the dream of
the fried egg is the dream of a
fork swirling in the bottom of a
The hallway gave off a musty odor.
Night after night, lights burned.
Busted dreams heaped in boxes.
Black marks covered floors.
Across Audubon Park, a man makes his bed on concrete, head
inside a cardboard box; feet in fur moccasins require a second
glance at his cradled thighs, hands, face, hidden like the wood duck.
we brush off our debts
with a heartfelt embrace,
mad tales from the other side,
and an honest smile that sends you back to the bar happy for another stolen round.
she bowed her head and turned it away
from where the flag had been raised
as the Soviet national anthem played
but when the Mini came to a stop
a metallic hand came down on her
left shoulder
made Gabriella face
her assailant,
gibberingI am all smoke and shifting seasons
crushed pack of American Spirits in my back pocket
we are weak-knee wasted
outside my apartment
vodka-veiled memories all I have of that night
Writing is seen as a form of silence
so everything is read aloud,
traffic signs, shopfronts, TV and radio
are talked over the top of all the time.
There was a room for people unable to feel. Inside were captions cut away from their pictures. One task of the day was to find the picture that went along with the caption. When the teacher came into the room wearing his apron of severed heads several people unable to feel cried out for the first time. But it was faux disgust.
Because illness was honing in like a scraggly coyote.
We became still, one within the other folded like leaf within leaf.
And we took strength from mere light, mere water, mere melodies
chanted in quiet devotion as the first star laughed over the dogwood.
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