Only
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This is only one street. One streetlamp. It is only your face illuminated by brownstones and moonlight, The clean shell of you. It is only the rain, this night, This rain like poison Singing softly. I am telling you that your fleeing sears me. I [...]

body of War
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After Piggyback Ride by Lisa Yuskavage   We are giants escaping from a burning world   My face is torn Or maybe it is the military planes From ash veins, my vantage,   I don’t know where your body ends  and my dying begins.   [...]

What They Mean by Radical is
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when I open the door to leave  my apartment, it’s a political act.   when I open my eyes after abandoning sleep, political warfare.   when I pull the covers back up over my shoulders, cradle the cat   into the crook of my arm, [...]

Serpentine
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 I had just an hour of darkness left   to slip out, past the cats  dreaming on the stairs, and feel my way    along the outdoor wall,     and    step along the stone path to the car,  slide my bag in back,    then hoist up my [...]

Bluets
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I woke to bluets on the church lawn one morning, barefoot in dew and babydoll. From where did the  blue throats come, sprung cluster  in sod at the foot  of the white mon- olith? from  earth, from God?   About the Poem: This poem is [...]

Vir Heroicus Sublimis
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I praise the way you fall asleep in your car  when you are tucked into your garage.  The wood you hack for the fireplace, in there, around you, like a blanket of acres, of trees that make you feel as whole as the car does; [...]

Dear Algorithm
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In order to miss you, I have fastened stones to my feet, walked out into the middle of Lost Lake. It is mossy here. I think I see Zoe’s denim skirt that blew off the dock in 2021. Algae, a red ball, what was once [...]

Education
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Do you remember you tried to show me how to ride a bicycle, when I was nine years old? …You were showing me how to ride a bike, and you fell and I saw your face then. I remember the expression on your face when [...]

Sonnet for the Wood Ducks
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The wood ducks aren’t splitting the stream today. Did I dream the ornate etching they wear on their feathered backs? It is winter, says the stream. A scream can be a weather event. Once I saw a mountain bluebird without knowing what I saw. Shock [...]

Ars Poetica: Moonlight
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for Scott   It’s the last full moon of the year And here, I am thinking of beauty   Of the way we can bring the moonlight Into the night of our room, the sky of   Our bed. It’s the last full moon of [...]