English Poems

A man with binoculars
fixed a shape in the field
and we stopped and saw

the albino buck browsing
in the oats — white dash
on a page of green,

flick of a blade
cutting paint to canvas.
It dipped its head

Would you believe it, I got lost again
And all roads led to Rakestreet. Which was which,
The short road or the long? A girl of ten
Behind her counter, drew me a thumbnail sketch

I was born as a woman, I talk you to death,
or else your ear off,
or else you to sleep. What do I have, all the time
in the world, and a voice that swings brass back
and forth, you can hear it, and a focal point where
my face should be. What do I have, I have absolute
power, and what I want is your money, your drool,
and your mind, and the sense of myself as a snake,
and a garter in the grass. Every bone in the snake
is the hipbone, every part of the snake is the hips.

I have met them in dark alleys, limping and one-armed;
I have seen them playing cards under a single light-bulb
and tried to join in, but they refused me rudely,
knowing I would only let them win.
I have seen them in the foyers of theaters,
coming back late from the interval

Because in medieval Italian it meant “room”
I tied the curtains at their elbows with
what could have been honor cords or worse
yet, a belt from the 60s, so hideous were the
tassels that were dancing a little tarantella
after I had propped the windows and the wind
had carried in the song the rubbing trees
were making, without any accompaniment,
mind you, from a tambourine, although the bells
of   the occasional sleigh played that part,
while I waited for the vixen and their shameless

To make, you first have
to create materials. Re: man, we know
the rib removed. But, before — ?
Forget ash to ash, dust
& c.

Stick a floating rib (i. e. thoracic
11 – 12, y’ know — “Edenic”) in a glass
of  water with the promise
it’ ll grow
roots like leek or fur

Hard to reach, so you yank your clothes
getting at it — the button at your neck,
the knotted shoe. You snake your fingers in
until your nails possess the patch of skin
that’ s eating you. And now you’ re in the throes
of ecstasy, eyes lolling in your skull,
as if sensing the first time the joy one takes
in being purely animal.

I don’ t say things I don’ t want to say
or chew the fat with fat cats just because.

With favor-givers who want favors back,
I tend to pass on going for the ask.

I send, instead, a series of regrets,
slip the winding snares that people lay.

The unruffledness I feel as a result,
the lank repose, the psychic field of rye

swayed in wavy air, is my respite
among the shivaree of clanging egos

on the packed commuter train again tonight.
Sapping and demeaning — it takes a lot

It was when they determined that I had been born dead
That my life became easier to understand. For a long time,
I wondered why rooms felt colder when I entered them,
Why nothing I said seemed to stick in anyone’ s ear,
Frankly, why I never had any money. I wondered
Why the cities I walked through drifted into cloud
Even as I admired their architecture, as I pointed out
The cornerstones marked “1820,” “1950.” The only songs
I ever loved were filled with scratch, dispatches from
A time when dead ones like me were a dime a dozen.

“I know kung fu.” It won’ t bring back the world.
5:15 a. m.: I wake from another dream,
the same as every dream. A man builds a ship
in my chest. Each of the sailors
carries by her breast a picture of her sister.
The ship is not the image of a ship.
Beyond its sails there are no stars.
The water is only water because it’ s black.