New Poetry
In the Thin Places, a poem
Heaven and earth, the Celtic saying goes, are only three feet apart, but in thin places, that distance is even shorter. Eric Weiner, "Where Heaven ... Continue reading
The Butcher Birds, a poem
Each morning as we walk the farm's perimeter, we find victims of the butcher birds: grasshoppers, beetles, lizards, frogs, snakes, mice, impaled on cactus spines, ... Continue reading
While the Music Lasts: A Poem to My Younger Self
For most of us, there is only the unattended Moment… or music heard so deeply That it is not heard at all, but you are ... Continue reading
Excerpts from
Love in the Time of Dinosaurs
Auggie Vernon and the Eclipse
He has everything he needs set up in the back yard: two triangular UPS shipping tubes held together by duct tape in the middle, with ... Continue reading
Field Trip to the Serpent Mound
Once again our professor reminds us that we have not come here to see the Serpent Mound but to see the geological formations beside it, ... Continue reading
Holiday
Day followed day, and this and that Seemed to be happening As always, but through it all Already loneliness was seeping. Anna Ahkmatova I ... Continue reading
Portrait of the Poet as a Woman
Your second wife calls to say that the children get ill after you bring them home Sunday night it must be something they eat what ... Continue reading
Should, Should Not
after a poem by Czeslaw Milosz A woman should not love a man, but if she does, she should keep the child of their breath ... Continue reading
The Lies Our Parents Tell Us
The Lies Our Parents Tell Us begin in childhood: you're not dumb, you were not an accident, the sight of you doesn't make us sick, ... Continue reading
The Toast
To God, Who did not save us. (after a poem by Anna Ahkmatova) Let’s drink a toast to this dreadful old house, filled with lost ... Continue reading
Excerpts from
Where Lightning Strikes:
Poems on The Holocaust
Lager-Lieder (Camp Songs)
Not last night but the night before, twenty- four Gestapo came knocking at the door. As we ran out, they ran in, and this is ... Continue reading
Letter to Sylvia
I praised the dead, which are already dead, more than the living, who are yet alive. Ecclesiastes 4:2 For years, whenever I thought of visiting you, a certain ... Continue reading
On the Other Hand,
On the Other Hand, death: not everyone’s favorite topic of conversation, I know, but some things they have to be talked about, they can’t be ... Continue reading
Survivor: One Who Survives
The only difference between a madman and myself is that I am not mad. Salvador Dali Four or five times a day, steamy baths fog away her ... Continue reading
The Day the Snakes Came
We thought, at first, that we were imagining them: that sliver of disturbed dust by the sidewalk, that hint of damp on the kitchen floor ... Continue reading
The Dead Bodies that Line the Streets
The Dead Bodies that Line the Streets chatter and snipe at me constantly, as if I were responsible for their being there. But I ignore ... Continue reading
