Poetry
Summer 1984
Mustering Light: A Sequence
I SURVIVING A three-year-long, ravenous siege by deathOf friends, of parents, cousins, uncles, auntsLeft me so skinny, holding in my breath,My tailor gave up taking in my pants.I’ve spent so […]
Nonfiction
Spring 1983
The Other Long Poem
Over the past two decades the only kind of long poem taken seriously by poetry’s readership was the sequence: a series of lyrics thematically rather than dramatically organized and depending […]
Contemporary American Poetry
Summer 1982
The Eyes
A colored psychoanalyst? Sorry. You want me to sit here? You look half-Jewish. My wife's friend Belle nudged me to come. I hope You're not a Muslim. Do you have […]
Contemporary American Poetry
Summer 1982
To My Younger Self
So there you are: twenty, hands on your hips,Squinting at the sun. Dressed in a white shirtAnd purple cashmere sweater, you sniff the Spring airFor death, merely to write a […]
Contemporary American Poetry
Summer 1982
The Abortion
When they met her hands could cradle a fish.She could pluck his smallest hurtsLike barnacles from a baby's face.And when he betrayed her with a womanTwice her age and a […]
Poetry
Autumn 1980
From Manhattan Carnival: A Dramatic Monologue
The Street The street is full of children off to school. I enter them, swim in a wading pool. She lugs a briefcase much too big for her. He […]