Poetry

The martyr is borne
through town on the backs

of believers.
Such a ghost ship!

Storm me.
Send 

me down into the dirt
& dark, raise 

me like thunder up.

Suppose we surprised him coming off the path
into the patch of pines and saw palmettos,
two girls with our child-sized bikes. Suppose
he had a reason to chase us back to the path,
his pale face flushed with—what? Desire? Wrath? 

My enemies used to annoy the hell out of me with their fake cheerfulness, their pathetic need to be liked, or their drive to dominate every conversation. 

Do you know the poems of Max Jacob?
Do you know Talese, Gay? Swenson, May? 
Do you know Goldfinger, alias Gert Fröbe?
Do you know Robinson, Sugar Ray?

When you parted the muslin curtains, the white branches of winter trees became the arms of girls in their spring frocks in April and May.

I teach them to behave just like the rest.
They’re marked as absences, take up no room.
They only raise their hands when others do.
They never speak, even when spoken to.

The light will inch across the ceiling
until it meets the wall. 
                                       The sheets
will seem softer than you remember.

Deep in the wood where things escape their names,
Her childish arm draped round the fawn’s soft neck
(Her diffidence, its skittishness in check,
Merged in the anonymity that tames),
She knits her brow, but nothing now reclaims
The syllables that...