Obscurity and the Amateur (audio only)
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Recorded at the Chancellors Reading, Poets Forum 2015. NYU Skirball Center. New York City.
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A girl on the stairs listens to her father Beat up her mother. Doors bang. She comes down in her nightgown. The piano stands there in the dark Like a boy with an orchid. She plays what she can Then she turns the lamp on. Her mother's music is spread out On the floor like brochures. She hears her father Running through the leaves. The last black key She presses stays down, makes no sound Someone putting their tongue where their tooth had been.
1982
Obscurity and Voyaging
The hand was having a hard time holding the pen.
A superficial cut.
A long clear silent night.
A book held open by a dolostone.
The occupant selects a sentence, No one knows
how small the smallest life is.
If there’s a call, it will not be answered.
A bath; the burning of sweetgrass soothe the limbs.
As a memory stings the brain.
The furniture serviceable but weird, on the verge
of grotesque.
The vein of light under the door is a comfort
To the occupant.
The air inhales the passerine lines of a single singer.
2013
Morning Star
This isn’t the end. It simply
cannot be the end. It is a road.
You go ahead coatless, light-
soaked, more rutilant than
the road. The soles of your shoes
sparkle. You walk softly
as you move further inside
your subject. It is a living
season. The trees are anxious
to be included. The car with fins
beams through countless
oncoming points of rage and need.
The sloughed-off cells
under our bed form little hills
of dead matter. If the most sidereal
drink is pain, the most soothing
clock is music. A poetry
of shine could come of this.
2025