October 1, 1982
Why Your Numbers Do Not Increase
At the hour you climb the stairs Out of the world of your pains and pleasures Up to the quiet chambers of the serious And find the guidebook open on […]
October 1, 1982
Shakespeare in Delaware Park
She makes me agree beforehand Not to leave early if she does, So I stay when she walks out at the break After Act II, while Othello's faith Is still […]
January 1, 1982
Burlesque Night at Le Cave
Women tumble through the red duskbottoms up, and above them bluebelllights sensitive as fingerstouch a breast or ear.Here is the comic, a little old boll weevilin a terrycloth tuxedo: Man: […]
January 1, 1982
Scarlet Fever: 1948
Look at Baby cried my sister at the door. Night after night my poor hot potato of a head thrashed in sweats and dolors, my green face, my red eyes […]
January 1, 1982
Coinaliste
She can drink from a beer bottle, she can light a cigar and blow out the match, she can drag on it so hard the end blazes, she can inhale […]
January 1, 1982
The Luna Park Ghost Train
For the Seven Dead in the Luna Park Fire, Sydney, June 9, 1979 Today they stand still, the great fright machines—the doughbeater which lifted, turned, plunged, yells of terror in […]
October 1, 1981
If you look at this tapestry, if you read this poem, you always want to give gifts
She’s taking a bath in heaven you mean in a tub, yes but you know surrounded by France and music and leaves and ducks and musicians and flowers, the costumes […]
October 1, 1981
A Red Carillon Whose Berries Are Bells
Because rain fell early and long this summer, the yard spawned hundreds of wild strawberries: pendent hearts below a canopy of leaves, whose sawtooth edge we learned to spot from […]
October 1, 1981
Mountain Idyll
Here is the light of the heart, yellow as apples. Trees shoot up overnight, shaped like the nightmare in a gothic novel, above them the sky is rainbow colored. The […]
October 1, 1981
Sleeping Beauty of the Bronx
Dearest friend, dead to me by time’s present fiction: I read your plight weekly through the dream whorl of print, how they pox your face and arms with high-strung electrodes, […]
October 1, 1981
Swimming
She slips like a vow through blue water, rides a white lion that slides through her fingers, talks learnedly of touching her hand to the bottom. The water is dappled […]
October 1, 1981
Guardians of the Faith
To guard the works of art— my gods, what lions we have to be! to guard in a golden way the lines of poetry how we must roar bravely and […]