Category Poets

1.All afternoon it rained, thensuch power came down from the cloudson a yellow thread,as authoritative as God is supposed to be.When it hit the tree, her bodyopened forever.2. The SwampLast night, in the rain, some of the men climbed over…

It grew in the black mud.It grew under the tiger’s orange paws.Its stems thinner than candles, and as straight.Its leaves like the feathers of egrets, but green.The grains cresting, wanting to burst.Oh, blood of the tiger. I don’t want you…

Every timebut onethe little fishand the greenand spotted frogsknowthe egret’s bamboo legsfrom the thinand polished reedsat the edgeof the silky worldof water.Then,in their last inch of time,they see,for an instant,the white frothof her shoulders,and the white scrollsof her belly,and the…

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready to break my heart as the sun rises, as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingersand they open— pools of lace, white and pink— and all day…

Last nightin the fieldsI lay down in the darknessto think about death,but instead I fell asleep,as if in a vast and sloping roomfilled with those white flowersthat open all summer,sticky and untidy,in the warm fields.When I wokethe morning light was…

I saw himin a dry placeon a hot day,a travelermaking his wayfrom one pondto another,and he lifted uphis chary faceand looked at mewith his gravel eyes,and the feather of his tongueshot in and outof his otherwise clamped mouth,and I stopped…

The poppies send up theirorange flares; swayingin the wind, their congregationsare a levitation of bright dust, of thinand lacy leaves.There isn’t a placein this world that doesn’t sooner or later drownin the indigos of darkness,but now, for a while,the roughage…

In the fieldswe let them have—in the fieldswe don’t want yet— where thistles riseout of the marshlands of spring, and spring open—each buda settlement of riches— a coin of reddish fire—the fincheswait for midsummer,for the long days, for the brass…

Here are the perfectfans of the scallops,quahogs, and weedy musselsstill holding their orange fruit—and here are the whelks—whirlwinds,each the size of a fist,but always cracked and broken—clearly they have been travelingunder the sky-blue wavesfor a long time.All my lifeI have…

When death comeslike the hungry bear in autumn;when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;when death comeslike the measle-pox; when death comeslike an iceberg between the shoulder blades,…