POEMS
Maybe the sperm lugged it along from the dim past
when it crashed into the egg. What had gone wrong,
what switch switched at the least opportune moment? …
It is so damp here it is like an exhaled breath.
The earth has opened its airholes and sent itself up
in the form of little castles, to check out the other side ….
The poem I was going to write had basic
picturesque snow, but the “esque”
started worrying me, feeling catchy as
a Facebook post, and then I got overwhelmed
with posts and thought I might wait
until there was enough snow to garner
some hidden meaning. …
are slipping through, as the lamprey did,
and the zebra mussels, the Irish, the Mexicans,
through holes in the fence, upsetting our delicate
craft, carp huge and leaping, taking jobs
as dance instructors, flinging their scarves
of water, displaying how far even the awkardest
gesture can go, ...
Jake says it’s one turtle on the next one’s back,
all the way down. Near bottom are the skulls
wrapped and half-wrapped, turned to stone,
ribs turned up like ship-ribs. Grins that say
friends forever, whether you like it or not. …
Poem for Record Players
For their relentlessness, their
clever launching of the needle’s
secrets skyward, their luring
the needle to the hiccupping
end, for the red record player
by the low beveled window …
I have returned to the refrigerator of my youth,
the one that droops
its shoulders. A small thing,
just noticed, humming in the corner
of my mind, …
The Automat serves the original and loneliest fast food.
Drop in a coin. There could be no one else in the world,
just you and something made somewhere else …
Winner of the 2009 Pushcart Prize
The white sheet I remember, flashing across
the bed and I was watching my mother and the crying
and the bed disappeared and all was white
but it was not snow, it was my mind …