In The Poetry

Little Elegy

But now that I am used to pain,
Its knuckles in my mouth the same
Today as yesterday, the cause
As clear-obscure as who’s to blame,

A fascination with the flaws
Sets in – the plundered heart, the pause
Between those earnest, oversold
Liberties that took like laws.

What should have been I never told,
Afraid of outbursts you’d withhold.
Why are desires something [...]

This next poem is a series of five sonnets called ‘My Mammogram’.

My Mammogram

I.

In the shower, at the shaving mirror or beach,
For years I’d led… the unexamined life?
When all along and so easily within reach
(Closer even than the nonexistent wife)

Lay the trouble – naturally enough
Lurking in a useless, overlooked
Mass of fat and old newspaper stuff
About matters [...]

The Agave

The villa’s switchback garden path,
between the potted railing and the sea
and under the canopy of overlapping pines,
winds through what can grow under them:
plants from a moon orbiting Venus maybe,
brambly fig, yucca, holm oak, firethorn,
and silvery, bloated succulents -
The Penitent, Dead-Child’s-Fingers,
Mother’s-School, Chapel-of-Solitude.

The agave beside the stone bench,
where I have sat heavily all day,
reaches out in [...]