poetry: results 577–600 of 735

He could find no better word for life

than flat.

Father Latta held a quarter

in one of his two closed hands.

Which hand? He was quietly telling

jokes to pictures of dead pastors…

in a pale yellow Tupperware bowl on the way into Boston…

It is both the depth of field and snow

that have shortened the telephone poles

by half or more.

Snowflakes here fall like all the others.

They may as well be microscopic,

crushed bones. They cannot melt

even if the ground somehow forgives.

Always I send what can only be called love.

Eating goat cheese & our friend's salad

we are frivolous as pronouns.

Tiger said why are you

so pretty. I have seen you in pearls

and laces. At night

kissing each part of your nothing.

So the wire bird abandons writing.

I give up

my plastic mouse.

The apartment lobby choked with incense.

I had a laughter & for that

you had fir trees.

I found a ball of grass among the hay

And progged it as I passed and went away;

And when I looked I fancied something stirred,

And turned again and hoped to catch the bird…

I am! yet what I am none cares or knows…

She learned later she'd lunched with a movie

star from Mexico. They'd almost exchanged

Ah! He didn't offer his S.U.V.,

didn't apologize for the deranged…

since regaining all my faith

in aerosols,

sweet whipped cream for instance.

What I keep of you I keep in my stomach

where it is easiest to feel empty,

easiest to feel full.

What is the shape of the artificial

heart? Accordion or tin toy wind-up bird,

artichoke or closed fist.

For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.

For he rolls upon prank to work it in.

For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.

For this he performs in ten degrees.

Strong is the horse upon his speed…

And why not an equation? The numbers

          keep him warm at night, beg him to read stories.

They believe in him when his wife will not,

          when the forecast calls for snow, unending snow…

My parents remembered the Cuervo but forgot the condom.

I wasn't flattened by that bus when I was five.

I didn't go with Thom and Mick to the ravine that night.

It was the expectant month. The rivers rose as fast as they fell. One morning the cherry trees were freckled with something like green blood. There were the usual hardships and joys, and often they felt quite unusual.

Acorned & gnomic, trees, too, are mists.

Candles of.

Believing's almosts.

We bailed out the rowboat, trapped in the middle of a sinkhole

of longing: ripple of silver, the trout

beneath the water.

We were caught by the teacher…

There is a quick breath after the accidental cut and before the blood wells up, pain red as a poppy, the body a font unto itself. Thinking too hard on biology, anatomy, the course of history, I am amazed I stand here breathing. Where is the invisible, intricate clasp of my undoing?

The moon fades in and out but has no weakness.

For years I watched two free falls of light trickle down the courthouse wall.