The Wounded Table / La Mesa Herida

poetry
-after Frida Kahlo   Have you seen my painting?   2 x 8 meters, disappeared, passed through the walls in Warsaw. I suspect it has been exiled to a Soviet…

Endless Dictations

poetry
  pour down like rain on the roof tiles of a house on the outskirts of the city we once lived in before the war dispersed our possessions to the…

Till You Walk In Her Shoes

poetry
  I’m walking in your shoes, the black boots trimmed in fur, found in your closet, price tag dangling, the evening of the day we buried you.   I was…

The Life of Body and Soul

poetry
  Or, on rare inspired days, the life of soul and then body. And sometimes, both suffer together, like a man with a bad foot limping through the airport, late…

And a Car Turns Down a Street

poetry
  And a car turns down a street for the final time, its service puttering to an end. A man sits on his bed, puts on his shoes for—what will…

Dispersal

poetry
  The partial veil of the mushroom tears,   reveals its   stem joined with the gilled cap’s frail underside.   Flecked with primordia,   the damp soil is woven…

My Late Life

poetry
  My late life, father of my delights, you vanished without explanation or was it my fate of which I had been patron and author until parsimonious death cut the…

London Morning

poetry
  Your morning soon Your morning song London morning Is dawning New York night Has fallen And when you are waking I’ll be dreaming Of a woman waking In a…

Asking

poetry
  I asked, and the persimmon said, bitter.   I asked, and the bucket said, cast into darkness and rise filled.   I asked, and the dipper said, a dry…

In the Place des Vosges

poetry
  Hid below the rooflines’ ridge, the sun had raised a sort of alpenglow along the brick facades across the square.   Eyes down, reading, I was unaware, until the…

Anne Street

poetry
  I still find the matches holding her place in Gay’s Fables, or Hobbes.  The spines have suffered. Those days, she worked at a desk on the landing, slept on…

Audubon

poetry
  Shooting was needed to bring the bird close to hand, but the first things to alter after death and before the specimen’s arranged, paints prepared, are the eyes that…