The Green Streetlight
The ineffable… I’ve walked into your trap. I went to a spring late at night and froze like an armless statue in the middle of an autumn garden. What…
Everything I Let Go of
One of us is dead. One of us sleeps in his van, parked at the curb in front of his sister’s house. I’ve just retired. In the morning…
Let Me Copy the Rest of That Poem
Oh what longing, my dear young friend Each prison night I dream of your smile— Kissing my sleeve, I imagine your hair My lips are bitter, my body icy…
Rainy Season in the Highlands
A swallow, a hazardous stretch of road A tall waterfall, heard through a long night Step quickly across a vanished river Wait for rain in the flutter of butterflies…
The Mihrab
is the closest you can get to God. When I was young I was in the habit of rolling up pages from the Quran and pushing them into my…
Portrait of Us Burning
If the morning scaffolds, then night prayers come. If years ago, Mother & Father ate only rice & beans, then we slept in one bunk bed & Saturdays were…
On Not Writing a Poem for Almost Twenty Years
Looking out at the world without words or looking out at the world with words like empty lawn chairs, collapsible in the wind, you know one thing for…
i sugared your sorrows
for ninety-nine cents / pulpy, stringy, filmy, fibrous the first time we were alone / a texture only you have felt after the dust speck inside you…