My father's father sold tombstones
door to door, with lines from
dime novels like _this is a just reward_.

When the girl sings, I see
the strings in her voice
the velvety tendrils,
winding and fluttering
the spaces between us
trembling with crimsons
shuddering with saffrons
blazing with the teal of Sunday
church bells

1.
Waiting are they? Let them wait. This is the last of the earth!
Codeine. . .bourbon, I am
Content.
It’s just that I
can’t sleep. Boats
are knocking,
boats against the past. I
worry. Don’t
let poor Nelly starve: I understand,
my worn tongue reeling,
why the ...

It’s not the perfect photo,
this latest of you and me.
The light is bad, grainy and too-dark, but
the pub was small
and mirrored
and just what I’d imagined
when I’d imagined England.

And a shriek was heard
And the flowers of blood
Began to drip blood
And all the flowers
Began to drip blood
And the enormous crowd
Came to collect the blood
And all things dripped blood
And the sun grew red and dark
And a little boy walked beneath it ...

I
The taste of your mouth and the color of your skin,
skin, mouth, my dearest fruit of these swift days,
tell it to me, were they always at your side
for years and for journeys and for moons and suns
and earth and weeping and rain and joy
or ...

Remember, my soul, the thing we saw
That soft summer morning:
At the turn in the path, upon a bed of scattered stones,
A carcass lying raw.

I told the army that my father was abusing my mother and that I had to stay home to protect her. This girl whose job it was to check out these kinds of things arrived at our apartment. It was a planned visit, so I had time to arrange for ...

When I was fifteen, when my hair was growing down past my collar and my face was fixed into a jaded smirk, Mom and Dad decided it was time to get out. Out of the city; out of sinful, glorious NYC. Out of “this whole rat race,” Dad said, over ...

July 2, 2009

There was a bit of marinara sauce spilled out on the counter in a cluster of islands. Four blotches of red, decreasing in size and arcing away from the stovetop like Hawaii. The sauce was cold and was slowly drying up, and soon it would take a sponge and some ...

Having finally made his decision after weeks of deliberation, including long sessions of pacing, breaking into sprawling, silent walks from his apartment to the piers to the bridge to the square and then back, all the while considering implications and ramifications and whether it would be stronger to or stronger ...