My ex-lover received it at seventeen
skiing the steep slope at Wintergreen called
Devil's Elbow. The early snowmelt along the Blue
Ridge had slipped the white limb of a birch

through the crust, jutted that camouflaged tip
into the center of the trail. He hit it, full speed,

flipped over his ski ...Read more

to fever and the millennium. The bullet is all consequence. Sun Ra refuses red - long and high, low and deep. His arms are long
enough to embrace them.

About this poem
"This poem makes myth out of tragedy as a way to cope with the sublime horror of our racial reality. We hear stories of black men and boys being gunned ...Read more

The night is still, the moon looks kind,
The dew hangs jewels in the heath,
An ivy climbs across thy blind,
And throws a light and misty wreath.

The dew hangs jewels in the heath,
Buds bloom for which the bee has pined;
I haste along, I quicker breathe,
The night is still, the moon looks kind.
...Read more

Love gives all its reasons
as if they were terms for peace.
Love is this but not that
that but not this.
Love as it always was.

But there is no peace in the mountain
cleft where the fruit bats scatter
from the light.
There is no peace in the hollow when
the heat snuffs night's blue ...Read more

One morning state police
escort us to your grave
the next my flight is canceled.

Maintenance issues breaking
out all over. You would speak
of a "grand theory," something

tying all this together, but
you had none yourself, none
that reached me then or now

as I drive your ...Read more

One moment take thy rest.
Out of mere nought in space
Beauty moved human breast
To tell in this far face
A dream in noonday seen,
Never to fade or pass;
A breath-time's mute delight;
A joy in flight:
The aught desire doth mean
Sighing, Alas!

About This Poem
"Alas" was ...Read more

The narrow clearing down to the river
I walk alone, out of breath
my body catching on each branch.
Small children maneuver around me.

Often, I want to return to my old body
a body I also hated, but hate less

given knowledge.
Sometimes my friends-my friends

who are always ...Read more

Before I watched you die, I watched the dying
falter, their hearts curled and purring in them

like kitfoxes asleep
beside their shadows, their eyes pawed out by the trouble

of their hunger. I was
humbling, Lord, like the taxidermist's

apprentice. I said
yes, and amen, like the...Read more

The children were asking
a thousand questions about why
the sky was blue and grass was green
when suddenly their tongues
were stilled by an answer they
never saw. Now silence rings
in their place so loud a stone
can hear it in Arkansas.
So why not the men inside
the sky who only hear the roar...Read more

Dead man's fingers-
short and still
or waving spindles
brain coral,
mountain coral
ground small-they
would be pebbles
if they weren't shards
hiding places
for trumpet
fish and crabs
live and dead coral
What is sand made of?
Who is to know
which is coral <...Read more

I turn on the radio and hear horses, girls becoming women after tragedy. Talk about dreams! His heart was covered in a thin shell the color of the moon, and when touched, I'd grow old. The best movies have a philosophy, Dorothy, after being subjected to witch-on-girl violence, is rescued. Someone hung himself on that set, a man, who loved...Read more

I will get me to the wood
Where the gods walk garlanded in wisteria,
By the silver-blue flood move others with ivory cars.
There come forth many maidens
to gather grapes for the leopards, my friend.
For there are leopards drawing the cars.

I will walk in the glade,
I will come out of the new ...Read more

A steel hush freezes the trees.
It is my mind stretched to stiff lace,
And draped on high wide thoughts.

My soul is a large sallow park
And people walk on it, as they do on the park before me.
They numb my levelness with dumb feet,
Yet I cannot even hate them.


About This Poem
"...Read more

Let them not say: we did not see it.
We saw.
Let them not say: we did not hear it.
We heard.

Let them not say: they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.

Let them not say: it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.

Let them ...Read more

Today I woke up in my body
and wasn't that body anymore.
It's more like my dog-
for the most part obedient,
warming to me
when I slip it goldfish or toast,

but it sheds.
Can't get past a simple sit,
stay, turn over. House-trained, but not entirely.

This doesn't mean it's time to...Read more

In the autumn I moved to New York,
I recognized her face all over the subway
stations-pearls around her throat, she poses
for her immigration papers. In 1924, the only
Americans required to carry identity cards
were ethnically Chinese-the first photo IDs,
red targets on the head of every man, woman,
...Read more

Days been dark
don't say "in these dark days"
done changed my cones and rods

Sometimes I'm the country
other times the countryside

I put my clothes back on
to take them off again

About This Poem
"I thought of Tuesday origins, its relation to Mars and its significance as ...Read more

Come when the nights are bright with stars
Or when the moon is mellow;
Come when the sun his golden bars
Drops on the hay-field yellow.
Come in the twilight soft and gray,
Come in the night or come in the day,
Come, O love, whene'er you may,
And you are welcome, welcome.

You are sweet, O ...Read more

Midnight empties the street
Of all but us
Three
I am undecided which way back
To the left a boy
-One wing has been washed in the rain
The other will never be clean any more-
Pulling door-bells to remind
Those that are snug
To the right a haloed ascetic
Threading houses
Probes ...Read more

Now the dead past seems vividly alive,
And in this shining moment I can trace,
Down through the vista of the vanished years,
Your faun-like form, your fond elusive face.

And suddenly come secret spring's released,
And unawares a riddle is revealed,
And I can read like large, black-lettered print,
...Read more