On the day of your Bat Mitzvah, you twirled beneath the snow, your unpierced tongue extending like an ophidian from a cleft, trans- muted...

We discern the milky seeds of dying dandelions, afloat in mid-June breeze, and I tell you as I boy I saw them through my bedroom window,...

The cat of which I scrawl is but a menace. He doesn’t make an attempt at being cute. His purr is like a Dodge without a muffler. He will...

—a small flake of soot or other dirt Oxford English Dictionary To say my brand- new book of poems is just a magnet for the dust is an...

What is it about our conditioning that moves us to hate the weak and ugly? What stories were we told of beautiful riders and delicate...

Our daughter is dead. We plant seedlings by her grave in April, when Spring seduces with all its promise, moisten the ground with a jug...

I was finally compelled to cut my lengthy hair. Twirling it on my fork in spaghetti’s place, staining it Ragu-Red; quaffing it with my...

I blame everything on our thumbs. Their cursèd opposability; picturing how things would go if not for their relative acrobatics: the...

I’ve always overblown my heart’s confessions, what I’d do  for you,   screaming from the mountains every minstrel boasts they’d climb,...

You walk in awkward solemnity, your eyes upon the grass as if they’re trees, and you above their crowns—over half a mile   in the air,...

—for Rico   Our moon’s a prime example of less-is- more. Its slivered, crescent shine. Its mountains on the brim of light and dark. Risen...

Come, and trip it as ye go, On the light fantastick toe —John Milton, from L'Allegro Surrounded by their chatter, we note we haven’t ...

Hear this: a puffin is not a baby penguin, despite my decades of thinking it so.   I cannot be angry at the puffin, its countenance of...

If it's blasphemy to say this then so be it. You are the one whom God should have made in the beginning. A more beautiful name for each...

I pluck the olives   from the salad and that makes it less than Greek. You ask me if they’re green or black and I state it makes no...

You greet me with Morning ,  never Good Morning— like you did when hearts were younger.   Morning    rises from a horizon, like an...

The final line of this poem no longer exists. It was surely there for the taking , its fingernails clutching rock, at the top of a...

When you asked me for the best Italian bistro  in this city, I answered  google it.   That day on the beach,  as you peered into the ...

There’s a beauty to our numbers that I note with admiration: the shape of cipher 6 and its curving, crescent close; 8, with its weaving,...

I only see her when she’s out, the woman across the way, pushing her lawnmower that has no engine, the grating of squeaky wheels, its...