In The Poetry

Opening the Hands Between Here and Here

On the dark road, only the weight of the rope.
Yet the horse is there.

Several years ago I took a kind of private vow that I would give no readings that don’t explicitly acknowledge the wider suffering of the world, which some of us feel, others of us are privileged to only know from newspapers, and yet which every day bring the evidence of our extraordinary capacity for an [...]

Each Happiness Ringed By Lions

Sometimes when
I take you into my body
I can almost see them – patient, circling.
Almost glimpse the moving shadow of the tail,
almost hear the hushed pad of retracted claws.
It is the moment – of this I am certain -
when they themselves are least sure.
It is the moment they [...]

The Adamantine Perfection of Desire

Nothing more strong
than to be helpless before desire.
No reason,
the simplified heart whispers,
the argument over,
only This.
No longer choosing anything but assent.
Its bowl scraped clean to the bottom,
the skull-bone cup no longer horrifies,
but, rimmed-in-silver, shines.
A spotted dog follows a bitch in heat.
Gray geese fly past us, crying.
The living cannot help but love [...]

The title of this poem refers to a bell in the great cathedral of central Krakow. The bell also sometimes goes by the name of Sigismund.

The Bell Zygmunt.

For fertility, a new bride is lifted to touch it with her left hand,
or possibly kiss it.
The sound close in, my friend told me later, is [...]

Opening the Hands Between Here and Here

On the dark road, only the weight of the rope.
Yet the horse is there.