(for Steve Hiatt) Hold sleep, the certain knot of peace,you’ve found her—church supper, in eulogy, changingmoney in the narthex, buoyant, brightly unstringingcarnival tickets from a spool, marking tallies,stamping hands maybe, respectably engagingthe grinners come to gorge, but absentingherself from the long tables spread with vinyl sheaths. The prepossessing shadow,behind her,
Already, he has worked like this for hours, moving his scythe beneath the gold horizon. There’s stillness here. There is the swirl of wheat, both what’s been cut and what remains standing, and the blade not so different
On the way home, at Yaqoobi circle we hit that hard right angled turn and got the truck stuck like we have about a thousand other times. That turn always tricks somebody. We were working to clear the wreckwhen Hakmal’s truck behind us was flunghigh, flipped as if by an angry djinn, gonein
Acrostic: Grandmother Mary and the Great War Could this be the river that burned?Under late summer’s waning moonyellow star-points of fireflies flashed onand off in evening’s mists, constellations rearranging themselves throughhaze high above avenue lamps that blinkedopen as dark awakened. City of Forests they called it
In memoriam: Clementa Pinckney and eight others murdered at Mother Emanuel It’s only here where I’ve seen the surf crimping into ruffled-up petticoats, the edges of olive and indigo skirts of wave, of glance, of flirt, of buff— Rococo cream frame for the rough tide, garlands of pale
We pull them on daily weighted with sentiment, one at a time; first over the toes, sliding past the arches, and finally tugging up and over the heel. We tightly knot the laces, tucking in the excess strings, fasten buckles, shine the scuffs off the toe cap, secure the straps;
for Joan Sit under the tree long enough And you will be covered in blossoms We will all bury our loves In the cold earth of springtime Even if no one is there to watchOr bear witness or testament Even a hero’s song will end in
“ . . . there is nothing so coherent as a paranoid’s delusion or a swindler’s story.”—Clifford Geertz, in his study of Balinese cockfighting We’ve left the frontier with the blue helmets. There is always Schubert playing somewhere in a war zone.The commander puts Notturno in E-flat Major on deckand
For my grandfather, Lewis Parke Chamberlayne “ . . . so-called periods of transition (if all periods are not so) –those centuries when a new religious or political systemis growing up amidst the decay of the old one . . . ” —L.P.C. Since the contagion isn’t stopping,upstairs is
The origin story is as follows: a fairy and a dragon fall in love, they fuck.Then they separate, each taking half of the eggs that would hatchinto the Vietnamese people, for the princess longed for the mountains,and the dragon longed for the sea. In the version my aunt tells, so
In the attic of this hundred year-old housethe gable window stares dry-eyed into the sun. Years ago, careless and in a hurry to finish at the topof a tall ladder, I painted it shut from the outside. Now it won’t budge. With the heels of both handsI press against the
Iraq war protestors. Feb. 15, 2003 JFK Federal Building, Boston, March 2003 After days of drums, chanting, and frightened planningwe sit, quiet, on a scab of concrete,blocking the spinning doors of war.My animal eyes fix on the officer’s belt,quick breath awaiting his orders to leave.Dressed for war in a parka
