poetry: results 673–696 of 735

Sometimes it's the color red

in a weave or the sun north of Rome

or the rubber band around a two-hole punch

                    and suddenly I'm there again—

if the lights are on or off, if we're in the kitchen

or the bedroom, half-naked or fully disrobed at six

or seven when we should be thinking about other things

and I really don't care for this position or that particular…

"Am I my brother's keeper?"

Like the fuel load of bombers,

clichés come squared and balanced…

The ocean unfolds itself. The tongue stays put,

unreadable and needless.

We come to watch, speechless to the lake

where dragonflies dip their abdomens like brushes…

Nothing is motionless, not the painted portrait

blinking while you're away

whose acids are discoloring buttons, whose frame

is oxidizing while moistening its eyes…

Sick maybe, and if so yes for home, but not homesick,

that place where vast pastures continue as horizons—

but scared, and hoping as in a game with friendly players

they let you take back a wrong move. That something…

Open on the desk Kafka

                                        is flying in his little bucket

     the drops of ink he spilled while becoming aloft

form the profile of a woman's swan neck…

like the heavy shoulders

of the sea, how the north

star would be named Melville,

would sit about the broad sky…

but I can't forget           there is your story

I tell her she's superstitious

she fires back:

"You're a poor excuse for a skeptic."

She believes in miracles…

said the sign

in the parking lot

Or Frogs

After a bath

my very clean ass

I lay here in limber fish

(I am not a rice paper kite)

tormented by the wrappers…

Working on a foundation reminiscent of a screened-in porch I helped my family build when I was a kid, only much larger. Carting wheelbarrows of sand for the cement mixer & concrete blocks. Old friends showed up…

More interested in finding than knowing. The symposia throng, led by panels, almost political, mostly American, addressing the question, 'What is American about American poetry?'

Last day of winter won't disappoint. Rain one degree from the gentleness of snow rides the added chill of March wind bruising skin blue, or red, dreary, dismal. Olson called it dour.

After days of silent glow, nearing the kneaded air and pacing out the things that I wanted to say, I saw you—we met—like two birds along the paths by the water, between which was haze and wood.

In the twilight of things, pressed up against the acres of glass, with our bodies beneath: we walked to the place where the deer had woven themselves into the trees. The grass mounded white, the light receding.

It's the last box, the last chair,

the last look at the place—

the history shared with four walls,

a roof, a floor.

Hey, Richard,

the rug

got dirty…

you are the urinal

in which men piss infidelity

when wives demur sex

She's queasy over orange juice

and muffin batter rising

while shots of booze

she can't recall names for…

This is the box I am putting you in:

Clamorous piano.

Vegetarian meathead…

The blood stain on the chair

in our bedroom at the four-star hotel

does not bother me.