Vagrants
Two big geese can scare up the dead. — August Kleinzahler, “Canada Geese in New Jersey” Mid-March. The long, wet winter hasn’t moved on yet. They’re still out there in the slough, dark-bound, ...
Read MoreHands
photo by Philipp Weissenbacher “The Kiss” by Auguste Rodin in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (for Verlena Orr) I would rather kiss hands. Hands have done everything: been cold and burned; caressed and braced against a fall. Hands are dangerous: have become fists, instinctively; gripped knives in anger, released bombs; hands have felt pulse and pressed desperately against wounds. Hands have worn paint, grease, the pungency of garlic, scent of fresh sex. Hands have been hidden in pockets, left awkwardly exposed. Hands have bathed children, lowered the dead. Hands have scars where they...
Read MoreMine
April is National Poetry Month, and there I was, April 13, 10 a.m., reading a poem by C.K. Williams, the one about how he would like to write a poem for every girl in the world and how everyone — children, congressmen, men in the woods, workers on the assembly line — should have a poem, should see one swing by on the hoist, should have one float down to them like a feather, find one written out on the underside of a turned stone… just the surprise of knowing that there are, out of nowhere, poems that are their poems alone, that their poems can be held inside of them and...
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