Letters to a Young Poet, 1987 (audio only)
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The night after she returned from the hospital
the uneven rumbly liquid breathing of one soon
to go under kept me at the surface of thoughts
I couldn’t escape. Clonazepam, Lorazepam,
not even Ambien could pull or sink me. And in the morning,
sure enough, we couldn’t coax or shake her awake
2023
For the father who wakes
and wakes himself, eyes full of himself
and for the one, who when the sun descends
slips into the stormy
smite flat the rotundity o’ the world.
Done in with conspiracy and murder
in his sleep (his eye-tooth finally unfixed
and tucked into a cheek for safekeeping)
he dreams of a three-armed garment
unable to wonder or comprehend
how he has come to this blurred ridge and broken—
I try to fix in my mind, his shining eyes
the terrors he shut his lips against
2014