Sometimes the mist overhangs my path,
And blackening clouds about me cling;
But, oh, I have a magic way
To turn the gloom to cheerful day-
I softly sing.

And if the way grows darker still,
Shadowed by Sorrow's somber wing,
With glad defiance in my throat,
I pierce the darkness with a note, <...Read more

out the hurricane
all night at my place-
we'll take cover like

the lamps & I'll
let you oil

my scalp. Please, I needs
a good woman's hands

caught in my hair, turning
my knots to butter.

All night we'll churn.
Dawn

will lean in too soon-
you...Read more

Close your eyes he said and took my hand.
There was something he wanted to show me,
something I couldn't see. Raised like a scar,
a seam running through the body, here
where the day went dark. I'd wanted to see
the limits of sight, to know where the painter
had found an edge, and stopped,
the day done ...Read more

The afternoon light lights
the room in a smudged
sheen, a foggy-eyed glow.

The dog digs at the couch,
low-growling at the mailman.
I'm spelling words with pills

spilled consolidating bottles:
yes and try and most of happy:
Maybe I'll empty them all.

A woman I don't know <...Read more

In Lijiang, the sign outside your hostel
glares: Ride alone, ride alone, ride
alone - it taunts you for the mileage
of your solitude, must be past

thousands, for you rode this plane
alone, this train alone, you'll ride
this bus alone well into the summer night,
well into the next hamlet, town,
...Read more

Driving the highway from Atlanta to Phoenix
means swapping one type of heat for another.
A bead of sweat rolls over my chest,
around my belly and evaporates
so quickly I forget I'm sweating.
Body chemistry changes like the color
of my skin: from yellow to sienna.
My sister says, it's a dry heat.
<...Read more

That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long untaught I did not
hear,
But now the chorus I hear and am elated,
A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health, with glad notes of daybreak I
hear,
A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves,
A transparent base ...Read more

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound-
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no ...Read more

With aloe juice and cayenne
The planets we strained to reach
That was how being young tasted
Each of us a geode looking to be cracked open
And to crack each other open
Over and over
I am no longer young except to those who are older
In the way that youth moves along
The conveyor belt
At a ...Read more

In Westport the small French cart
of the voyageurs earned the name mule-killer.
Once Shawnee was the lingua franca
up and down the Mississippi,

then mollassi became molasses.
For the bringing of the horse

it is said much can be forgiven: burn
of Missouri whiskey and aching molars,
<...Read more

to real life. Showers, eats supper, plays video games.
Twelve hours later he comes back, high-fives, takes over the drone
from other pilots, who watch Homeland, do dishes, hope they don't
dream in all screens, bad kills, all slo-mo freeze-frame.
A drone pilot works a twelve-hour shift, then goes home.

A ...Read more

these days I speak of myself in the past tense
writing about yesterday knowing tomorrow
is no more than mist crawling toward violet mountains
I think of days when this weather meant you
were not so far away the light changing
so fast I believe I can see you turning a corner
the rain comes in smelling of pine...Read more

The beauty of one sister
who loved them so
she smuggled the woodlice
into her pockets & then into
the house, after a day's work
of digging in the yard,
& after the older ones of us
had fed her & washed,
she carried them into
the bed with her, to mother
them, so that they would have
...Read more

The parrot, screeching, flew out into the darkness,
Circled three times above the upturned faces
With a great whir of brilliant outspread wings,
And then returned to stagger on her finger.
She bowed and smiled, eliciting applause...
The property man hated her dirty birds.
But it had taken years-yes, years-to ...Read more

So make the most of this, your little day,
Your little month, your little half a year
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall forget you, as I said, but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie
I will protest you with my favorite vow.
I would indeed that love ...Read more

Our stories can only carry us so far. I know
there are layers beneath the layers and
you haven't asked but I would describe
a fresco not even finished in the workshop,
discovered beneath damaged plaster here
in the Scuola del Cuoio. A simple Madonna
and child marked off with a draftsman's
patience, a ...Read more

Say we no longer bear witness to a body-politic of trauma
after revolution
by anesthesia or erasure. Say we cover our eyes
to crossed olive-wood beams on a hill. Modes of witness
expose our inadequacy, the human. Forgetting
is a sign-yes, a thing once existed. Say we are unworthy
of witness, internal or ...Read more

Ten years of driving the same highway, past the same tree, the picture is
at last complete. The eucalyptus tree and narrow birds above a blessed
steel sea with no thoughts of yesterday, today, or tomorrow.

Black cormorants on bare branches spread their wings as if in prayer.
A sunny day in Summerland and the tree, ...Read more

I think a lot of y'all have just been watching Dr. King get beat up and, ah
vacillating opportunists straining for a note of militancy and ah

Hold your great buildings on my tiny wing or in my tiny palm same thing
different sling

and then they shot him and uh left him ...Read more

The lettering on the shop window in which
you catch a glimpse of yourself is in Polish.
Behind you a man quickly walks by, nearly shouting
into his cell phone. Then a woman

at a dreamier pace, carrying a just-bought bouquet
upside-down. All on a street where pickpockets abound

along with the ...Read more