Poetry

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,

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

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

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,

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

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

“ . . . 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

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 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

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

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

Friend! This year the olives will be late, it has been cool.             Cool? I’ve never sweltered like this. No. This is what cool means. We pick by hand, putting in ventilated boxes in the