CRI DE COEUR


An expression without
Try face to face to dark
Leaving alone that for

A time we saw outlines
I saw an empty room
I saw the opposite

The silence of a crowd
Nineteen candles burning
I pulled the chair out for

The father kissed the son
The rain turned into snow
The mother wasn't there

ADMINISTRATION OF COUNTERFEIT VIRTUE


She's got a plastic Hollywood ashtray stashed in her desk drawer

He's selecting a fig
leaf for the campus logo

a leitmotif

And the bird goes blind in its egg . . .

What leaves

(The Christian, on his ascending ladder, burns an outline over
__the water,
and then we know, once we’ve seen it,
that kind of silence--it’s hard to just write it away . . . )

Comes back as something covered with winter

A benevolent, anti-intellectual lust . . .

Mountains and sky painted by Albert Bierstadt

Fireworks for cave-dwellers

And then the wind starts blowing

A pelican sits watching CNN, wearing slippers, drinking a
__glass of scotch . . .

*

It's not really part of this season anyway

Beowulf growls at Jane Austen . . .

But the student's not delusional, she's talking to God long distance

not exactly the business plan dad had in mind . . .

Which is why we find ourselves out West

once again

looking to escape

(A segue from the merely fatuous?)

sleeping through the fog
of another marine layer . . .

The Crucifix casts such a tall tall shadow

*

And the black crowned night herons crap
all over the eucalyptus trees
they’re nesting in, the trees shifting in the soft Pacific light

the birds muttering to themselves

As I stand facing the green water, the sound of traffic grows
__faint . . .

World blindness

just one voice had been in the room

But then everyone started talking at once

I’m aware of all of this now

standing here

in Southern California

listening to the roar of the ocean . . .

NEWTON-WELLESLEY HOSPITAL POEM


I really don't know how you feel . . .

slighted in the morning

your feet not anywhere near bottom . . .

Your parents weren't looking in the visitor window

Nor were your friends—

Closing in on twenty-three I'm afraid the plane has run off course
and the wheels refuse to descend

For ten minutes, after pleading your case, the heart beating
in your chest is the heart of Susan, your guardian soul mate . . .

it’s better than a video game. Snow falls in that dream you have
in which you navigate a small boat to safety

The goblets of wine stand like towers

A bird stuffs a worm
into
the dead doll’s mouth

Orphan, Indiana is available on Amazon.

***

It doesn't say so in the book--I was going for a minimal

look; I wanted few distractions buzzing around on either ends

of the text--but big thanks go out to Jordan Davis, whose

encouragement and editorial advice was vital. The same goes

for Dana Roeser, whose comments were so valuable. And,

yes, her encouragement.

THE WIND


Like when you die
Or sleep too long,
As in a pond
The still body--

It doesn't move--
But no witness?
For many hours
You might as well

Stand right up in
The sunshine and
Dripping light, and
Suddenly weight-

Less, the body
It it doesn't
Endlessly blue
Smell of the pines

AIR TRAVEL


Kid science, a signed leaf or two,
a paperback with a broken
spine, a tent or an incubator:

brilliant metaphor lambikins!
I mean, the way to my heart was
once by boat. I'd been alert to the

chances. Tears forming. Loneliness
residing deep in the head of
one snowman. Spider eggs grow in

the garden, the shadows that creep.
One shadow forms a peninsula.
One shadow eats all the leftovers.

CONSIDERING ENVY


The cat sits in its
parlor eating a
dog. The paste mists all

over the mirror.
Which college team would
you vote for. My time

on earth, lovely, dis-
Tributed. I walk
with a walking stick.

DIRTY GIRL


"I" grows deliriously
large in its principle
setting--substrata--

reflective, weary.
The earth is like a wet,
panting bear, riddled

with spinning birds,
one bows toward the front of the other,
peeling back the lens

of an eye. I zooms in
She goes back out--
Eye hums back into focus.

THE FEELING


I didn't say
I wanted her to

Listen. I just talked.
Years sweep backwards

Over the Acacia trees. I
Had had a real time once.

I never preface
my remarks.

GO DOWN TO THE LAKE AND COME BACK UP

_____________________(On Election Day)

Go down to the lake
and come back
then go down to the water again
and come back up.

Press the remote control to On
and turn it off
then go down to the water again
and come back up.

We went back--everyone was waking in a glade,
it was a day driving past itself,
and we left--everyone was walking down a grassy path,
and airplanes filled the sky.

Go down to the lake
and come back
then go down to the water again
and come back up.

NEED


One glance, the room is full, or
Inside a stone bench
the weight of the hours
Either way it comes out equal

THE MANY AND THE ONE


From deep beneath the
Surface another
Surface shadows out
Below. This doubles

Population. They
Speak, we hear silence
But know what they say.
No birth precedes them.

I can't exactly
Verify a thing.
The person has a
Head like hers. And don't

Forget just thinking.
Names blooming, inside . . .
Yellow flag, green bus.
Ghosts underwater.

Then elsewhere: don't steal
My soul. She has "me"
I have "her" And so
do they "make" Me.