Poetry

My name streams from your mouth—an adagio with indentations anda scent of sacrifice.I see my namewritten ingrass style calligraphy.I want to slide into each strokeand swim with each stroke.I am a dolphin swimming,bobbing up and downalong the Wai’anae coastI am afraid of drowning.The dolp

I talk in my sleep of angry things,In the early light,Louder than I ought to speak.As she stirs up out of sleep,She puts over me arms and legs,     Despite the words.     Despite the worrying words.

He’s moved his body crossways in the bed.His bony legs are thrust between the bars.His knees are scored with crusted scabs and scars,But time has not effaced his striking head.His urine soaks his undershirt; the sheetBeneath him’s drenched. He will be hard to shift.I roll him on his side

Oh Tigris, Oh Euphrates watching Greek armies,Roman archers, legionnaires armed to the teeth, Britishforces, American military, empire-building further, furthereast and south across your deserts, hills, ravines, cities,villages, their shape-shifting alliances, offensives, counter-insurgencies, crush

I don’t know, never knowwhy this sudden joy swell,the sea wall of self fallsand a tide of stars poursover and through me.Please take my blood,make a serum, inoculateme for when this passesand I again fear, certainthat wonder cannot be.

Convince the Dauphin now, dear Joan, convinceHim now; forget the peasant business. WageCharm on him: boy-cut hair and virgin grace.Assert his strength to raise the English siege.The scene is mandatory, so the spellOnly awaits your touching. They are realYour voices: stop to listen, Joan. They callTo

“This was not my first fané,” he wrote.After a meal, our Stephen loved to sailinto the dining room, holding aloftthis last course: ice cream, whipped cream, and meringue.“Its presentation is a jaw-dropper…love to do it for a newcomer.”That night he chose a deeper bowl

for Oscar Christoph’s birthWax, little moon.Between toes and forehead,your fullness remembers itself.It’s still dark in your palms,darker still in your mouth,yet there beats and beatsa whole novelworld roundyour rolling ears,your found thumbs,your warm redfirmament—an outer-space s