She is a copywriter
at a law firm, where

the men remind her of

the creepy guy in the
produce aisle, with a

head of iceberg lettuce,

leering at her, smiling
—as she contemplates

the bright blank screen.

Is there life
after death?

The better
question,

Is there life
before death?

The rain ends.
All is lush,
and glistening,
and verdant
and a
beautiful
young girl
yawns from
boredom.

I’m in the produce
aisle and the local
fortune teller is

hurling strawberries
at me, as she yells,
Wake up, we’re in for

a wild ride and we
won’t be the same
when it’s over! Then

she charges toward
me, nearly knocks me
over and gives me an

electrified kiss. This
is the time when
peasants harvested

wild strawberries, she
says, then laughs like
a broken church bell.

The boy in a new
shirt, when asked
his age lurches
forward, all five
fingers splayed
in front of him.

She reads the
letter there, by
moonlight, under
the pear tree;
the fruit so ripe
it may fall
at any time.

The drunken clown
breaks his leg as he’s
singing and dancing,

and the bird in the
room sputters, boxed
in, disoriented, as the

brother outside has
his trained ear to the
ground, listening for

their disturbed mother’s
angry mob, coming to
reclaim her lost home.

White paper folded in
the shape of a house,
next to an egg
in the sunlight,
casting a long shadow,
on a pastel green
plastic table top.

As we know from
studying history,
there are four
essential
occupations—
rodeo clown,
shadow, pirate,
and facsimile,
and this revises

a previous
inventory which
included saint,
and saint is now
understood to be
simply an enhanced
facsimile of either
a rodeo clown,
shadow, or pirate.

He can’t help
himself. He

knows his
thoughts are

distorted, but
like a criminal,

he’s compelled
to return to

the scene
of the crime.

My father was
a salesman, all
of his adult

life. But I don’t
know much about
him, really.

Old and ill, he
fell into a coma
for many days.

Then, suddenly
his mouth opened,
round and wide,

like this world.
And without a
word, he died.

I am standing with
five rolled-up pages
of poetry in my

hand, ready to lunge
forward and smash it
into oblivion, when

she says, Don’t ****
that fly. Can’t you
see it’s praying?

The riddle of
everyday life.


A balloon rises
as a paper airplane
descends, and below,

a yardstick,
one end broken
off, while a ripening

pear sits on a
nearby chair, as
the drama unfolds.

Gulls are crying
just outside my

window, as I

construct a ship
in a bottle.

The room is empty
except for an egg,

about to erupt
with life, as it is

sitting on a chair
in the passing sun.

Dry dirt as far as the eye can see,
an empty landscape, then I turn
and see her, and she says,
How did we get here? and I say,

I think I’m asleep and dreaming,
and she says she thought that too,
then a fierce wind, and all is
brownish-gray air-borne dust,

then the monkey yells, Cut!
and he tells David Crocket,
the camera-man, that they
have truly captured reality

with great verisimilitude,
and the next thing I know is
I’m here, face down in the water
and washing ashore on a very

small island, a big sand-bar, really,
and she is naked, in a fetal position
and the monkey is kneeling over
Crocket’s corpse like an alter-boy,

weeping, and she yells, Shut-up,
you ***** little ape! and the monkey
howls and bites her on the leg, and
she crawls to one end of the sand bar

and I to the other end, and all is water,
as far as the eye can see, and the
monkey, a television actor, then a
director of acclaimed historical dramas,

is lamenting that Crocket was, The
Da Vinci of the modern age, and I’m
thinking, Da Vinci? Yeah. The guy
who never finished anything, and I ask,

How did we get here? and she says
she must be asleep and dreaming,
and I’m thinking, Yes, that must be
all there is to it. We’re dreaming.

Six objects in
search of a poem:

an overheated planet,
an obsolete

pencil, a burned-
out light bulb, an

overwhelmed young
woman, an unripe

avocado, and a
selfless form of love.

X is dragging the body of the
dead history professor, a man of
enormous girth and monstrous
height, through the empty

landscape, then the vast ocean
appears and X drops the body
into the water, where a shark
whose ancestry is four hundred

million years old, eats it, as X
recalls the professor’s sleepy
eyes, artificial smile, and
remarkably unreliable memory.

The tea
kettle
whistles

in the
kitchen.
Then all
is quiet.

A cloud
moves  
slightly

and the
room is
a little
brighter.

There was a
snowball fight.
A ****** nose.
A forgotten glove.
The evidence now
under a blanket
of white. Only
partial footprints
remain. Soon they
too will be gone.

How to navigate
civilization

in four steps:
Find a chair and

sit quietly.
Then, dismantle

the chair and use
the pieces to

build a ladder, for
a panoramic view.

Return to solid
ground, and

remake the chair.
Sit quietly.

I am in

the present I was in

the past I

have seen the future and

we’re in it

A dead chicken
on the sidewalk,
embers—little bits
of  burning paper

drifting in the
air, a man asleep
in a king-size
bed in an empty

warehouse, a “she
done me wrong”
song with a slow
cha-cha rhythm

playing somewhere
distant, and no one
there to talk to, and
no where to go, and
no way to get there.

It chirps and
and squeaks,
and whistles
and buzzes.

For twenty-two
million years
the hummingbird
has been

singing that
same song, that
simply says,
I am here.

A newborn
in the shape of
an old man,
an old man
in the shape of
an electro-
magnetic coil,
an electro-
magnetic coil
in the shape of
an empty kayak,
an empty kayak,
in the shape of
a newborn.

Living on
the roof of
hell we tend
the flowers
that perfume
our sacred
interim home.

Children imitating
flowers in the
school play. A
father in the
front row falls
asleep,
missing their
great allegory.

The open sky
reflected on

the winding
river’s water,

and I slowly
pass by, an

undulating,
a rippling

image for a
brief moment.

The morning snow falling
silently. The children

are absorbed in their play.
The house is murmuring

and sighing. The dad with
the noisy mind lives in

his own world.

Alone this winter,
an elderly man,  
with an eyebrow
raised at half-mast.

The wind-up
clock chimes

from the other
room. On the

wall, a painting
of a landscape

five-thousand
miles away.

The room
illuminated

by lamp-light,
as if it were

the middle of a
long dark night.

The calliope plays
its jaunty tune.

A cow is on
fire. A drunken

entrepreneur shoots
an apple off the

head of a child.
A young woman

in the audience
is having a

****** fantasy.
A monkey juggles

beakers of volatile
chemicals. Soon this

carnival will be
bankrupt, but for

them another way of
life is unimaginable.

Having toiled in the
garden, the young
woman sits in the
shade of an ancient
tree and sings a song
—as if serenading the
tulips and tomatoes.

He is on the porch,
to escape his wife

and kids. He smokes
a guilty cigarette.

It is yet another
New Year’s Eve.

The opportunistic
nouns are using
the lying adjectives

as they all cling
to the period, which
is catastrophically

overheated, as it
spins round and
round, and the  

verbs are moving
to the endless
margins where they

can just be, then
all is black ink,
the text redacted.

Nine words
scrambled
in the wind.


are

habitable

They

democracy

a

planet.

and

of

ending

After carefully
observing us,

the monkey
declares, You

are certainly
not a part

of nature,
what are you?

Our plight.
Instinct
lost, life
drifting, like a
paper airplane
swept away
on a breeze.

Just the outline
of the thing, the

stench of something
rotting somewhere,

the inexplicable
puddle of water in

the front hall closet,
but for some

a chance, like
the universe,

to emerge
from nothing.

The boy on a bicycle
speeds by in a blur, as
a paper airplane drifts
over the dog, curled up,
falling asleep, and
the egg sitting
on the counter
waits patiently
to be cracked open,
like the sun suddenly
rising in the morning.

From her window the
pale, willowy young
woman, a midwife,
watches a paper cup
being tossed around in
the wind. The dark ocean,
the great progenitor
in the background,
illuminated by waning
moonlight. She waits
for his headlights
to appear, her fiancé,
a fleshy, ruddy man,
the town’s undertaker,
who brings freshly cut
carnations, and a
long, warm embrace.

Employ science,
the way a poet
employs words.

Employ belief,
the way a
mathematician  
employs arithmetic.

Or, be the eye
that sees, and be
employed by death,
the way life is
employed by time.

Nearly drowned, the
fisherman runs from
the raging sea as it
swallows his boat, then
looks back to marvel at  
its stunning power.

She wades in the
river teeming with
life, holding her
sandals above her
head, her bronze
face illuminated
by the brilliant
late afternoon sun.

All day she tends the garden behind

the house. Every morning she lines up

clear jars on the kitchen counter,

like rows of pacifist soldiers. In the

evening they are filled with fresh

yogurt. Some evenings we sit by the

fire and she reads Haiku poetry aloud.

Nothing expository there, she says,

then winks and laughs like a church bell.

One night as I was passing by the

drive-in movie theater, I saw her

up on the screen, playing a spy

disguised as a goat. Last night she

sat in the meadow, in the moon light,

wearing the robes of a Buddhist monk.

In the morning I asked if she was

rehearsing for another movie role.

Oh no, sir, she replied, I can assure

you I am entirely the real thing.

Then she crowed, exactly like

a rooster at morning’s first light.

The news anchor,
with perfectly
formed ripe red

lips, describes
another unsavory
political scandal,

as the leaf blower
loudly propels
autumn’s colorful

debris from the
driveway, while the
iron heats up,

poised to press
the wrinkles out
of the white shirt,

with its faint
brown stain of
forgotten origin.

The finch
sings its

song as
if it just

discovered
itself in

the wonder
of nature.

What I saw at the
moment of my death:

a mouse trap,

a card trick,

a woman riding her
bicycle in the park,

a businessman

who lies for a living,

an empty kayak
navigating the river.

Insight, clear
and precise,
like mathematics
in the hands
of a poet.

Who is it that sits
on the cushion
on the floor, here
in the twilight,
during the final
hours of spring?