Aria
Not once have I wept over art in the Louvre, Uffizi or Met. Well, almost over van der Weyden’s Descent in the Prado, Mary’s grief, but that may have been indigestion after Madrid’s tapas, the Museum of Ham. A lithograph in Chelsea, Kathe Kollwitz’s dead mother and child splayed, stiff, discarded on the curb, brought a single, quiet tear. At the reception, the gallery on Water Street, I am at first preoccupied with drawings, paintings, prints, porcelain; delicate, curious assemblages, diminutive Constructivism; with wine, cheese and those gooey sweets with marshmallows, coconut and...
Read MoreRehearsals
Why do I hold my clean hands under hot water until they sting? My tongue aches from rehearsals. Silver chutes shoot my open eyes. Stiff slanting wings lift our bodies resting above clouds — breathing, dreaming. Trust loosens our shoes, unpegs belts cinched around our expanding profit motives. Trust will settle us down to Earth. Bright shields of elastic goose flesh. Wet maps wrinkle in my hot palms. I would dovetail all my hinges! Lets love our flaws above each wave. Counting freckles until we land...
Read MoreThe Cemetery Gardeners
Last Friday noon we planted cherry trees in the town On a moist lawn for those lost limbs and foundered souls of war. We laid them round, our cherry trees, heeling soon in place By the gate, like green apostles bound in burlap robes. And then with usual care, we champed the sodden earth— Heaving clay, until a stiff procession of barreled steel Passed by; or rather, a big new funeral play complete With chaplain chiming Latin; or come to think, was it Greek? Then boomed three salvos sounding like spit’n damnation. We rested blades and stared as brassy music blared Up and filled the vacuum...
Read MoreApproaching comet
Approaching comet speeds with icy gas exhaust as it nears our Sun in its faithful pilgrimage tithing cosmic gas and dust.
Read MoreTo Pete Rose
Dear Mr. Rose: even though you told me to get lost when I asked you for your autograph, politely, at Shea Stadium when I was a teenager, I still hope you are enshrined in Cooperstown someday, because having more knocks than Ty Cobb or anyone else is almost as spectacular of an achievement as my mother teaching herself and her parents how to speak, read and write English as a first generation Italian American, in a chippy game of cultural assimilation where there was no seventh inning...
Read MoreHeadlines
Oligarchies discard cartons of rotting produce in secret dumpsters across twenty-seven states withholding payment from migrants. Wraiths eat mold. Camellias bloom in acidic soil— gnarled, blackened with ash. Governors convey cases of bourbon to prevent viral contamination, the appearance of insensitivity. Activists quashed by the National Guard reorganize in abandoned airplane hangars, subsisting on canned tomatoes and roast beef. The nearly assassinated president revivifies, endorsed by state radio. Hospitals for Hollywood stars, skyscrapers, appear on the moon. Denizens die in...
Read More