FRESH KILLS

In the chaos of phase space squats
the small sundog. See spot run. See […]

WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM

Food is the gun that plows the poor.
A fly on that boy’s eye makes you sick. […]

THE WINTER GARDEN

Today on Broadway, we huddle from wind
beneath palms and piano fingers playing […]

BLUE ANGELS

Lateisha Terrell can’t find the hundred dead
presidents to plea bargain her ten-year-old’s […]

GLOBAL UPSTREAM DIAPER DEVELOPMENT

Under thirteen stars and a pearly slice
of moon, the buttoned-down pink-skinned minions […]

NOTHING ON TV (TONIGHT)

Someone named Bond paid 53.9 million dollars
for a painting by a guy who tried to shoot […]

THE FACTORY

Ninety dollars an hour in Angola
Indiana will buy you lunch and more. […]

ISM

Driving out of town, fast but not too,
sharing a cockeyed joke and smoke, sniffing […]

MONUMENT

The gross national product of Congo
is in a state of collapse, swooning […]

YOUTHS ADRIFT IN A NEW GERMANY TURN TO NEO-NAZIS

is the headline fit to print hard by an ad
for Tiffany eighteen-karat Stars of David, […]

THROW IT DOWN (WITH AUTHORITY)

Ernie Johnson in our studios will explain
the need for bonus coverage. Does TV enhance […]

XANGMU

After landslides and three days’ walk to town,
I get to play the Western stranger game: […]

CHINESE AIRSPACE

Impossibly still except for the bombing,
birdcalls and bombing, Tingri Plain rises […]

SENDERO LUMINOSA

The slowness of graves in unburying
the dead is small thanks from earth for the way […]

THE SHADOWS OF KILIMANJARO

The tintinnabulation of the vegetation
in the plastic carcass of memory rings […]

RAIN FOR NINETEEN HOURS

Delicious day of tent and rain, the wind
cold but not unloving, like mothers before […]

DARK CANYON: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE RIVER

Does a river flow backwards like the blues
or blue memory of life as a child, kicking […]

THIRTY-THREE THOUSAND FEET

The burnt rusted wreckage of crumbling
hills fills canyons with the rub of time […]

EVIDENCE OF BEAR

Like the dreamy housewife shrieking
Hitchcock shrieks at her refrigerator […]

MILES DAVIS

Funk so deep you were half the time
drowning: pretzeling your fingers […]

WATCHING THE GRASS GROW

Even Nat King Cole, so smooth
he became white in the eyes […]

DOCUMENTARY

Blue cranes among kudu,
the sand grouse captured […]

DA HOOD

Hitler, Pippen, Barkley, Shakespeare, Payton.
Gromyko, Nintendo, Kaifu, Hitler. […]

SLASH AND BURN

Say you’re wild dog or sleepy cheetah
kissed by sun through smoke, flushed tumbling […]

DESK WORK, AFTER HEARING BAD NEWS

I could use the stapler to staple
my eyes shut. That hurt would help […]

THE SPONGE

Like a boy on his first flight
asking to see the cockpit […]

LOST AND FOUND IN NEW HAVEN

The vodka-cut artery spurts blood
into the brain. Seven headless women […]

CHRISTMAS QUARTET

1. The Crash
When all the leaves fall from the banks […]

VALENTINE ON 109TH STREET

The memory of bean soup to the man
shaking on the supermarket grating. […]

THE DAY I TAKE HER TO THE HOSPITAL

is the day she needs me to help her move
into her seventh apartment of the decade. […]

CHYNA IN THE LAND OF REVOLVING DESSERTS

Jaguars jump with the grace she pours malts.
What’s extra in the silver vessel is key. […]

PILLOW TALK

Your brain can only be as big as my
vagina croons mom to son, cradling head […]

BLACK DRESS

The black bow at the small of your back
is the long rope harpooned to your mother’s […]

TURKEY BASTER

My drive to his flight is filled with oldies
on the box, making me sad and happy […]

SOFT OPENING

Lemon flowers and lotus ponds, temples
on the corner, turndown service, chocolates: […]

A FEW WORDS FOR OUR UNBORN CHILD

Comforting friends say there will be others
but you just missed tonight’s voluptuous […]

PREGNANT

Up the slow river we walk like children
playing games. Thumb wrestling, singing badly. […]

CRIB DEATH

The emptiness of accident
amid spastic clutter of clock […]

WHAT THE SHRINK TOLD US

When we commit the boy to the clinic
we strip the parents of all illusions. […]

A SMALL BOY, YOUR SON

A few years back I taught him ball: the drop
step in the paint, the pick-and-roll, the base […]

A DIVORCE

Everything falls: Rome, leaves,
breasts, the apple, shadows across […]

TROPICAL DEPRESSION

You’re a real morning-after pill
is what she said. (A canceled flight […]

NOSTALGIA

Riding the old train I used to ride when
I liked riding trains—past pouched loading docks, […]

SEMTEX / PA 103

10. My mother is weeping over my grave.
She places a pink rose petal on my name. […]

THE BIG ONE

Will it cause the dead to dance?
They’ve been waiting, arrayed […]

VERBATIM: MY AIRPORT TAXI DRIVER, WHILE WAITING FOR A TOW TRUCK, TAKES A STAND ON THE REPUBLICANS

If you don’t work, you don’t
eat. That’s the way I learnt
[…]

SEEING AND BELIEVING

Rivers fat with spring sliding by
on muddy oiled bearings in dawn blue […]

CONFLUENCE CAMP

The way wind beats us down then pushes us
forward, the way rivers braid then unbraid […]

DOUBLE BLIND

Trumpet squeal, rose stink, pepper flame, needle
prick: the eye blinks blind to all, unconcerned […]

RELEVANCY

None of it matters. Take a look at a contour
map or the flecked and dreamy dark chocolate […]

IF BOOKS WERE LIKE PAINTINGS

Bidders frothing at their bits to own the texts
would dominate the social pages. Writers would […]

PACKAGE / PACKAGING

A package can change your mind
about what’s inside. The way white […]

RUSTY CAGE

I’m going to break, I’m going to break my,
going to ride a pack of dogs, rusty dogs, […]

MY FAVORITE THINGS

Kisses on noses and whiskers on mittens,
flop ears on spaniels and cops who get bitten, […]

THE ARCHITECTURE OF IMPLOSION

This appliance is constructed to process
normal household quantities. Qualities […]

S, M, L, XL

Saraband of anagrams, symbols bow
and curtsy. Stain, take satin by the hand […]

BLANK

It’s so _____ no one can ________ much without
tiring of the __________. Twister put you in […]

DAYS

A cool shandy on the sweating screened porch,
the ice tickling air, melting silver chimes. […]

INDUSTRIAL FACADES

Sliding pig iron loading dock doors under arches
A circular window of brick over scraped gates […]

MILLENNIAL CURVE: A TORQUED ELLIPSE OR THREE

Not dead weight but live load: the hernia
of history ruptures any calm we carry […]

LITERARY FICTION

A perfect stranger, he arrived with a suitcase,
But one guest, lounging under the doom palm […]

PROCLIVITY

My wife tells me I’m fluffy. Rivals beg
to differ. The defense rests till fresh dirt […]

FOR DAISY, ON HER 13TH BIRTHDAY

A breath, a sigh, a breath, a sigh—you loll
faux savage in the delighted garden, […]

MAN, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN, WITH PIANO

Adrift on a cat’s-paw of chords, swizzling
his scotch between every tune, the man plinks […]

WORK

They don’t like you. They’re just using you like
a rental car. They want you to help them. They want […]

SWIMMING LESSON

Not quite coked beyond the caring point,
you let a small girl almost drown […]

COUNTING

Sitting up all night, watching the weather
channel, wondering where it will be nice […]

BELIEF SYSTEMS

The way falling planes at night believe
in their lit runways, the way basketball […]

MY PROSTHETIC EVEREST

We got the fax by yak: Weather turning
worse in three days maybe four—climb fast guys. […]

AN ATMOSPHERE OF ISABEL

If childhood was a plump freckled mess—
your head a bowling ball of grief, lonely […]

INVITATION TO MOVE WEST

I will take you to the rivers
I have known, throw you in and watch […]

SAN FRANCISCO TO SAN DIEGO

Who mooted the question of place, a home
page for life, the settling on a site where […]

X PACKS A DAY

Every Monday you check into the grand hotel
of your addiction for a meeting in the stingy […]

WOMAN TRAPPED BY SCREAMING CHILDREN

Like the Kenyan woman who killed her kids
and ate bits but was only charged […]

GUILTY

Queasy feelings my friends will testify
against me, crackling static in the trumpet […]

SKYLARK

After the Rambler, so mechanical and sideways
on the ice, we thought ourselves lucky […]

THE GRANDMOTHER POEM

Everyone’s got one. How she
holds the family together, makes […]

SORRY I MISUNDERSTOOD YOU

The way some people shape themselves for other
people, like water shapes itself for any vessel […]

DECISIONS

Having a child or having an affair
inverts the equation: what’s had, mister, […]

LOVE LETTERS

Who owns a letter? I’ve burned them, boxed them,
thrown them in the chopped Hudson. They floated . . . […]

VOID WHERE PROHIBITED

This is a frustrating type of song
said Hendrix about “Manic Depression” […]

WAY BACK IN THE VANGUARD

Compulsion. Not a fragrant garden stroll
among enthusiastic peonies. […]

ALCATRAZ

The tongue of fog that licks my walls
is not a picture postcard. The crooked […]

ANGEL FOOD

The ocean of thought at the bottom
of the barrel, breaking like waves […]

WAITING FOR THE LIGHT: 10:48 SATURDAY NIGHT

He tickles the cactus with small fingers
of water, alone in the fluorescent […]

THE JUG SHOP

The radio clears its throat of morning
news and traffic as the chardonnays get […]

HER, FOR INSTANCE

Her body now an overpeppered stew:
so much raunch through the years, leaving flesh […]

CAPSIZED

Fat Qawwals spin a deep circle of praise
with buttery voices, ticking tablas […]

Supermodel

Young lady in a battered, swirling palm, clinging to certain facts: first
the matter of her beauty, drawing deep from the bountiful but poisoned […]