poetry: results 145–168 of 735

I shoved naked photographs of me

into the sewer

after the breakup, to prevent

them from appearing

near adds for cello lessons

pinned in our grocery store.

         I wore my pretty blue choir

skirt as I was told to

         look past the accident

to find my double glass

         shape of flute within the frond

light gladiolas flap glass

         so to be polite, to capture

shyness back (most mornings it works…

Why so much stone here?

How far did we ride our habits

& with what weight of stubbornness?

At least our children shone & grew

to be tall doctors (not rock stars)…

Say the pelvis is untested, you're rookies,

the cervix ripening when the mucus plug

unglues. Beware a false labor. (All work,

no pay.) They will measure descent by plus

or minus from the zero station. Inform

your provider. Let inhale volume equal

exhale volume.

Say I'm the bone once believed

to raise our dead up

from the cold or that I believe

in anything but the speed

of each sublimating tumble

when ice moves directly into air

or when we do, weightless

with craving…

Then the sky is not in your clouds. And if the wings are not firmly attached to the mind and the armrest grown restless, recline. When the blue-suited voice of reason asks if you want the whole can and ice with that and not if you'd like her back, you can see how nothing is securely fastened.

She said in the dark church kitchen

that the moon was on her

and so she put her last clean sock up inside her,

that she slept last night

in an automobile, was sober

but wouldn't be much longer,

that the fires choked her

the smoke, she thought, was greasy

and intolerable like Phoenix itself.

The filling station like a blue can

of sardines edged with rose granite,

rope and wooden ore buckets

at the high-water nest of burning grass

in the baking mud of the palo verde.

All of the crabshacks are burning,

gulls are circling

the open crates of avocados in the snow

out beyond

even the earth's gravity.

This must be the judgment.

the self's heavy architecture

acing the wonder quiz

When I woke in our small boat I knew

only the sound of water. His words were

something else the night had changed.

He had not noticed my sleeping

or chose to ignore it. His story, perhaps,

something he needed to release:

the black world holding him close

and alone for his act.

I am buying rifles

from a black & white

catalogue in 1952, outside

a man high up

scrapes years from a

billboard, a candidate's face

and half a Mercedes

Barbed wire feels good sliding down the throat.

Coated in frost, barbs pierce un-gloved flesh, rotting posts.

Wire dangles into snow.

At dinner tonight, you put

hot sauce in my water glass, and I thought you were perfect.

You were wearing loafers, which didn't suit you at all.

I was thinking of the war, which I never do, but those tanks

lumbered in my dream, and I am still shaken.

You croon like Johnny, and you look like June.

To hear your thrilling trill, to take my stress

for one more song, shy son, I'll trade the moon,

your husky voice is best, I do confess.

Even today when every hour latched neatly to the next

(and each seemed to be the start of something) they were there:

your fingers clutching a splintered handrail, the clean crease

of your black collared shirt, your face staring at your face

If you were really dead, thought Harlan about Toland-in-Heaven, I would let you go. Then while I was at it, I would sort into shapes I could understand, all your difficult disguises. There are so many. I would hold your death in my heart and sharpen on it. Where we used to go to be alone, I would hold apart us together.

There was something about the way Toland just hung there in the closet that suggested to Harlan she had for him some very good news. Is it my hair?, she asked. Harlan looked at its fetish of brown loops and decided it was not, after all, her hair that made him think she had for him some very good news. Is it my wrists?

His knife plinks the ribs' curve.

Salmon organs spread,

a girl's coral dress come undone.

Overhead, gulls wing against the sky,

angled shapes that collapse as they drop.

At the turnpike a doe lies stiff

along a median of dry grass. Over her black

nose and eyes, an occasional fly

stirs. Summer is here.

I'm here for a second D & C because the first D & C after a missed miscarriage due to Blighted Ovum resulted in heavy bleeding for the past 6 weeks now I can barely stand up and last night thought I am finally bleeding to death and Arielle said, oh God this doesn't sound good, maybe you should lie down, bleeding like that. I mean women have babies when they sit on the toilet… I mean the bleeding might be worse there because of gravity and, I don't know, maybe go to the hospital? and Arielle hates hospitals

In their shared lagoon, the unfinished twin's head

               twisted against the head of the whole twin,

as if her mouth might reach her sister's,

               and there might be oxygen to spare.

Always said we'd travel, but he's busy

as a dust storm and done already landed

where he's like to stay, the ground

floor a that new fancy store in Hayford

that smells all through like perfume, and sounds

like high heels clackin in circles.

We spit the sucked off pulp off one side

of the porch, then spit the pumpkin seeds

into wooden bowls while Dad shook spices

in a Ball jar, something secret, something

different than the secret thing for popcorn

he called "Magic," seasons humming into

open drawers and cookie sheets. We wanted

only to carve but did this work for him.