Poems

With Mercy for the Greedy for my friend Ruth, who urges me to make an appointment for the Sacrament of Confesson Concerning your letter in which […]

Woman with Girdle Your midriff sags toward your knees; your breast lie down in air, their nipples as uninvolved as warm starfish. You stand in your […]

Words- Be careful of words, even the miraculous ones. For the miraculous we do our best, sometimes they swarm like insects and leave not a sting […]

You, Doctor Martin You, Doctor Martin, walk from breakfast to madness. Late August, I speed through the antiseptic tunnel where the moving dead still talk of […]

Young- A thousand doors ago when I was a lonely kid in a big house with four garages and it was summer as long as I […]

Black Man o’ Mine Black Man o’ Mine, If the world were your lover, It could not give what I give to you, Or the ocean […]

For Jim, Easter Eve If ever a garden was Gethsemane, with old tombs set high against the crumpled olive tree–and lichen, this, my garden, has been […]

Lady, Lady Lady, Lady, I saw your face, Dark as night withholding a star . . . The chisel fell, or it might have been You […]

Letter To My Sister It is dangerous for a woman to defy the gods; To taunt them with the tongue’s thin tip, Or strut in the […]

Life-Long, Poor Browning Life-long, poor Browning never knew Virginia, Or he’d not grieved in Florence for April sallies Back to English gardens after Euclid’s linear: Clipt […]