States of Poetry
This poem has not yet been written
and before it is I want to say I respect
the President of the United States,
the man himself and his office
and I respect what the people
mean when they say Democracy
though I do not know what this
might have to do with being armed
and having put these points like this
as plainly as possible
on t ...
You woke with a headache
and opened the bedroom window blind.
You bent forward as morning light came in.
It fell on your belly and breasts
and your sleep maddened hair.
I could hear the sickness in your voice
as you accepted a salad bowl to throw up in
and two pills with breakfast.
The new sun tipped itself up over distant mountains
outside the ki ...
For Marianne J Boruch and David Dunlap
We walk past the ruined past
pasted to the Academy’s cloister walls,
past broken Latin stones’ fracture ...
When it was nearly still acceptable
to nip the shoulder of the pleasant boy
sitting cross-legged in front of you
(leaning back and pulling the royal blue
wool of his jersey with loose teeth)
I had an elastic idea, which stretched
through the next twenty-five years. Senior
primary school's kingdom of fully grown
flax bushes and adult-sized toilets,
We are following a track that loops
around a lake impaled with trees,
a pinned-down habitat for platypuses
I would like to see, so try to walk
silently until a shadow across the sun-
dried turf in front of me blushes
curls and slides down a bank.
I stop, tell you what I've seen, smile
at the luck. You jump onto a log.
For the rest of the wal ...