Poetry

Time to pick berries. This strain (pink when ripe
instead of black) surprises me each August,
although I should be used to it by now.

John, you asked me what it was like to be black,
to come from a place where being black mattered.

In the halls of Pigalle, juxtaposition is not intimacy. 
Moulin Rouge Moulin Rouge Moulin
Red—Louise the Glutton spread high in her kick, 

I once believed in heavenly clarity—
do you know how good it feels to sing
of certainty, the wild apricot

At first among certain shadows 
you felt forbidden to ask whose they were.

Metrophobia
I, too dislike it, or at least I find
too much of it bromidic and unrhymed,

Above me in the night
My unknown neighbors walk 
Across a creaking floor

The ghost of the nineteenth century
still stalks the eaves 
of the hurricane house, its clapboard sheaves

When I hear that boy sing, I said, every other
Boy becomes a disappointment. Tiny wince

You flared across Boston
like a meteor, blond mane and lowered brow
in every coffeehouse off the Charles.