I remember watching my mother / with the horses, the cool, fluid / way she’d guide those enormous / bodies around the long field
Who doesn’t like a bit of flash, / a pop of red / like a nosebleed
At the cabin in Snug Hollow near McSwain Branch creek, just spring, all the animals are out, and my beloved and I are lying in bed in a soft silence.
Spring turns to summer, hopes fly high. A golden romance—in my bloody fists I smell osmanthus flowers. Under the pulped sun, lovers grow young and younger.
After the death of the dictator, his son wanted him embalmed. His son wanted him on perpetual display in a glass box.
What damage do I do? / The night avoids my eyes, so does the road. / I am never wholly myself, unto myself.
I’m writing a play about a Kommandant at Auschwitz / who recognizes one of the Jewish prisoners/ as a famous poet
Before North took a seasonal job / fishing for kings in Alaska / I’d never admitted to myself / that he was my only friend.
Inasmuch as our faces / bear resemblance, / now, to what // I imagine of them
Able only to recall / his parting footsteps—the chipping away at / a tree one fells at last