The Beggars

poetry
                          after the painting by Pieter Bruegel   Travel is travail the shortest trek is turmoil Mother Earth holds us close so low there is nothing we don’t look up…

Villain

poetry
translated from the Chinese by Fiona Sze-Lorrain   A villain can’t be someone concrete. A villain can be a neighbor, but not mine can be a leader, but not yours…

Resurrection

poetry
  Alanus ab Insulis insisted the soul Gets fastened to the body “with tiny little nails.” With tiny little Medieval nails The Latin term for their fineness—subtilibus— Attaches itself to…

Hawk

poetry
  I hear the hawk. It will not show itself, the short, high whistle sounds from the trees. If it were punctuation – a dash between this and this. Does…

My Mother Reading a Book on Dying

poetry
  I never saw her read another book. Cookbooks. After she turned seventy, she carried the thick book on what to expect when the body began to die to the…

On a Collage by Peter Sacks

poetry
  the shape of a wraith made                              from discards and swatches fabric cuttings pasted down                  …

From a Tree above the Liffey

poetry
  It will make good sense when you get there to rise before dawn and take a long look out            after the night has passed. Witness the wet gray…

A Sting Hovers in My Window

poetry
  Unmoved by my presence, the wasp works one end of her nest to the other. The lintel's shade elides the screen between our dwellings as the cross breeze carries…

Lingering Signs of Drought

poetry
  The white roots probed late summer underground, Sought in moist tubers of swelled potatoes A darkness that encouraged them to take Their fill, stretch out, and die. At harvest,…

Ode to You

poetry
  Yo, for how your “o” is like the peephole through the front door of my life (and so many others’) framing one face then another a cameo setting for…

A Day Here

poetry
  Even when a low ceiling of clouds is forecast for all its hours the day starts throwing light around like chicken feed from under a doorway or comes outside…

The Presence of Stasis

poetry
  The green blades glow as the low sun slants across lawns. The houses lining the lake hover above what’s ending: the day, the summer, my calculated innocence: nothing has…