D. Nurkse is the author of ten collections of poetry, most recently A Night in Brooklyn (Knopf, 2012).
Poetry
Jan/Feb 2017
The School of Loneliness
We arrived in that city long before dawn, my father, me, and the creaky brass-bound steamer trunk festooned with tattered labels: NARVA, MEYER LINE, HONG KONG FREIGHT. He dragged it […]
Poetry
Fall 2009
The Marriage at Grand Isle
Sometimes in each other's arms they come to absolute loneliness— a clock strikes, rain tapers off, the pupil of the eye blazes like a keyhole, they are naked like breath […]
Poetry
Fall 2009
The Present
We created models: this is a moment of happiness, this is a maple-shaded street, its yellow median line littered with double wings: some day we might know such things in […]
Poetry
Fall 2007
Hitching to Mount Hebron
1 We waited under the black oak and after five minutes or an hour, we were too just-married to tell time, a blue-gray DeSoto with its lights still on slowed […]
Poetry
Fall 2007
Letter from Solange
1 She writes: we have been invaded by images. We don't know where they come from. We suspect there is no artist. They have found a way to replicate themselves. […]
Poetry
Summer 2004
Survivors
The one we loved lay trapped under the tower and we heard tapping, first late at night, then in the silence between sirens, then always in that city half-deserted at […]
Poetry
Summer 2004
Night Flight
I made friends with a dead sparrow I found on the sidewalk, rigid in the center of a carved heart. I groomed it scrupulously. The only blood was a fleck […]
Poetry
Summer 2002
Spring at Black River
The dog is punctilious racing after the ball. It pains him to bring it back. Though we pride ourselves on our power to love, how to be loved is a […]
Poetry
Summer 2002
Home
1. You winced in the rocking chair, waiting for your water to break. I paced the outer edge of the raffia carpet. A radio was playing, as if there were […]
Poetry
Summer 2002
Cat’s-Eye
My father waved good-bye. I didn't wave back, scared I might drop my new cold smoky marble. At the core a spiral glinted and coiled like a small windy flame […]
Poetry
Summer 2001
Northbound
A bell tolled six times on an island in the fog and my father turned toward it: Angelus or a signal? Where the reefs must be, a buoy chimed […]
Poetry
Winter 1999
Rooms by the Night or Hour
Remember how we used to meet in a neighborhood of butcher shops, zinc windows, storefronts blank as canal water with traces of gold lettering? Remember the clerk’s thumb finding an […]
Poetry
Winter 1999
The Swiftness with Which Those Cities Fell
1. No Talks That August, reflections grew very brightand flickered at the edgesand appeared on land as well as water. Two faces from the screenglided in the crowd,one a father, […]
Poetry
Winter 1997
Riding West with Laura
Between Utica and Buffalo the billboards have grown old. A mother pouring milk for her son's Wheaties. A father waving from his immense blue DeSoto. You hum like a child […]
Poetry
Spring 1995
Scattering the March
I was not beatenbut the boy beside me was.He broke stride, stumbled,I saw the great stickscircling over him, corralling him,compassing him foreverinto their world.I met his eyes and lip-read“save yourself,” […]
Poetry
Spring 1995
Excelsior Fashion Products, Easter
They pay us time and a halfand they don’t dare catch usdrinking: we don’t insist,don’t pass a bottle, but each sipsa private pint, all sittingin the narrow room with our […]
Poetry
Spring 1995
Threshold of Liberty
When our eyes metat the Panther rallywe knew we’d be loversfor life: now in the narrow roomwithout that chant roaringUNITY, we feel spurious,perhaps we’re informers,perhaps we’re junkies.It’s a bleak neighborhood,transient. […]
Writing in Code: Literature and the Genome
Winter 2006
Adamah
My name means:anything made from clay. I was dust until Godbreathed in my nostriland began talking to meobsessively: “This is Pison, the riverfrom the Land of Onyx,these holes are your […]