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Author: GOLDBARTH, ALBERT
Matches Found: 784


Goldbarth, Albert    Poet's Biography
784 poems available by this author


#1117       
First Line: From here we can see the combination smoke as it ascends
Last Line: Whatever they say as the flight goes down


...ONE OF WHOM HAD APPARENTLY DIED IN CHILDBIRTH...       
First Line: -it was, in its way, %a pieta
Last Line: Then a 'black hole,' that the composition %cradles in the milkiest arms of the universe


...SUICIDE NOTE. BUT THE BODY OF FAMOUS DAILY POST       
Last Line: In the farther corner, two men


12,000 BONES OF FROGS AND TOADS       
First Line: And there's another line I've always liked in that poem
Last Line: The babysbreath bones of the soul


1400    Poem Text    
First Line: Saps, and the anal juice of an otter, and pig's blood
Subject(s): Paintings & Painters


15-APR       
First Line: My sister was 5. She'd saved 5 days' allowance - her 5 pennies


1563:01:00       
First Line: My grandmother's being ejected from the mediterranean
Last Line: Are warming their butts %at a rubbish fire. 1563. At last!-my grandmother feels at home


1563:02:00       
First Line: The prestidigiatarory moon is levitating the oceanwaters
Last Line: Here-' %look, one hopeful fellow offers her his spot at the rubbish fire


1563:03:00       
First Line: There's a story my grandfather saved her from ruffians
Last Line: The psyche stomps in golden boots, enacting dramas %in shrewd clean lines: timelessness, rapture, re


1563:04:00       
First Line: And she wasn't a mobius-strip-of-a-woman miro
Last Line: He's a few quick strokes of wailing, and %she's...A tenderness, a breath of paint, a heft of peasant


1563:05:00       
First Line: A bruegel crowd scene: you can count 500
Last Line: Rising into the gray of the northern skies: it's slough and renewal, %slough and renewal, until the


1880       
First Line: These women are alone-the one
Last Line: He's there, in the painted air. And she %can feel the weight of this close brush


20TH CENTURY       
First Line: ...Planning to power-market...' this, some suit guy
Last Line: ...That bends like all hell without snapping


26       
First Line: This was the prayershawl: two huge, golden tassels
Last Line: Multiple of thirteen, let me say it


27,000 MILES    Poem Text    
First Line: These two asleep...So indrawn and compact
Subject(s): Arctic; Birds; Migration


31-JAN-98       
First Line: The week I turn fifty, the president's busy
Last Line: He's writing: %rain on the river


35,000 FEET -- THE LANTERNS       
First Line: Every morning the stars would invisibly
Last Line: The pressure that lights those lanterns


400,000       
First Line: Why us, or how, or why the terrible
Last Line: Eugene, sarasota, tulsa, eau claire


A BRIEF, SYMBOLIC HISTORY OF THE TWO OPPOSED FORCES AT DAILY WORK IN THE UNIVERSE, WITH INTERIM SCEN    Poem Text    
First Line: Later, in europe, paper mills
Subject(s): Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Paper; Writing & Writers; Printing & Printers; Shoah


A FILM    Poem Text    
First Line: It's strangely like a man
Subject(s): Motion Pictures; Movies; Cinema


A HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION    Poem Text    
First Line: In the dating bar, the potted plants lean down
Subject(s): Singles Bars


A HUM    Poem Text    
First Line: Now: sun through the blinds
Subject(s): Sleep


A LETTER    Poem Text    
First Line: At the end of the day that's rubble around me
Subject(s): Junk Mail; Thoreau, Henry David (1817-1862)


A MONUMENT    Poem Text    
First Line: It's a weak chargray-and-camellia dusk
Subject(s): Corpses; Cadavers


A PHOTO OF A LOVER FROM MY JUNIOR YEAR IN COLLEGE       
First Line: Or the earth: one half in sun
Subject(s): Memory; Photography & Photographers; Universities & Colleges


A THEORY OF WIND    Poem Text    
First Line: This is how the page must feel: it doesn't
Subject(s): Wind


A WOODEN EYE. AN 1884 SILVER DOLLAR. A HOMEMADE EXPLOSIVE. A SET OF FALSE TEETH. AND A 14-KARAT GOLD    Poem Text    
First Line: Says my wife, and then she looks up from her book
Subject(s): Science Fiction


ACCOUNTINGS       
First Line: So, you want a lot of money -- the way
Last Line: They meant there were griefs involved -- though kept on saving


ACQUISITIONS       
First Line: The museum's newest, tooted in the media even down to a what
Last Line: Is the one thing they can't take away from him


AFTER SEEEING THE IMPRESIONIST GROUP EXHIBIT IN KANSAS CITY, WE DRIVE BACK THROUGH FLATNESS TO WICHI    Poem Text    
First Line: Fofr monet the light is always exclamation points
Subject(s): Kansas; Paintings & Painters


AFTER SEEING THE IMPRESSIONIST GROUP EXHIBIT IN KANSAS CITY       
First Line: For monet the light is always exclamation points


AGAIN    Poem Text    
First Line: There was such darkness in him then. And I repeated
Subject(s): Fathers; Illness; Mortality


AGAIN       
First Line: There was such darkness in him then. And I repeated
Last Line: Of closure in. It's a heartening fact. And then some


AGAIN. A DIRTY BEAM OF SUNRISE THROUGH THE WINDOW       
Last Line: Two days of his life: mysteriously kaput


AGAINST AN EMPTY BACKGROUND       
Last Line: Her stogie-smoking assistant hanrahan's very %skeptical look


ALIAS: A SURVEY       
First Line: You aren't you. You're sleeping. Now your bones are


ALIEN TONGUE       
First Line: Proficient in writing the 20th century poem now


ALIENS' TRANSLATION MACHINE       
First Line: Shayneh puhnim my grandmother said in her evocative
Last Line: Both such pretty faces


ALL ABOUT       
First Line: We need to know about somebody worse than we are
Last Line: Solved. What america, in any case, is all about


ALL-NITE DONUTS       
First Line: A customer's blowing %smoke rings almost
Subject(s): Prostitution


ALONE       
First Line: If night is a sentence, the stars are its being diagrammed


ALTERATION       
First Line: In an earlier, dead-end version of this poem
Last Line: Any earlier, death-row version of this poem


ALVEOLI    Poem Text    
First Line: Who are these unsung perpetrators of taj mahals
Subject(s): Human Body


ALVEOLI       
First Line: Who are these unsung perpetrators of taj mahals
Last Line: Of the doorway sleepers peeing will announce another day %tocart his heart around in. Now what's goi


AMAZE       
First Line: When booger t delivered minks for the


AMOUNTS       
First Line: As if there weren't enough. As if the 4,000 shoes
Last Line: Sane lives require: let this one (blank) be sufficient


AN ENORMOUS ELECTRO-MAGNET IS USED TO STEAL THE WORLD'S ELECTRICITY    Poem Text    
First Line: Elsewhere, drowned atlantis is found,


ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CANOPIC JARS       
First Line: (she's learned now, as she sauntered with a light tick-tock of he spandexed
Last Line: Begins, and each jar holds its own one whole clear note


ANCIENT SEMITIC RITUALS FOR THE DEAD       
First Line: I'm with thick, who supplies the lithe waitpeople of the guzzling
Last Line: The following morning I wake up with my father on my mind %strange bedfellows


AND ALWAYS THE WORK: THE WORK ITSELF       
Last Line: Would woo him back to finessing the drawingboard


AND EVEN A BASICALLY TELL-A-JOKE-AND-CLEAR-THE-HELL-OUT VEHICLE       
Last Line: Recurrent adventure meant ('natch) vera goode


AND NOW LET'S CHECK THE MAP...       
First Line: It's snowing': as if we really know
Last Line: Over our ravaged heartscape, where it's endless %and deep, whatever 'it' is, and utterly baffles all


AND SHADOWED HIM HOME, IN A NONDESCRIPT       
Last Line: They radiated 'gun.' at the corner


AND SOMETIMES AS SHE SITS AT HER RECEPTIONIST DESK       
Last Line: Even rhymes with that well-known sinister sister


AND THE RUSTLING BOUGH AS AN ALPHABET    Poem Text    
First Line: Like anything else, the air in motion
Subject(s): Wind


AND THE RUSTLING BOUGH AS AN ALPHABET       
First Line: Like anything else, the air in motion
Last Line: A blind god. He would read the world %by exactly that braille


AND, FROM HER LAST-GASP YEARS       
Last Line: Poignant moment in thirty years occurs


ANIMALS       
First Line: The feeling that I'm written. It comes
Last Line: -just the first blank page, but before 'page,' %and before 'blankness.'


ANOTHER PORTRAIT       
First Line: The kugel was good' ('good, good, good, always with
Last Line: Thirty years ago. (a shrug) my uncle morris shapiro


ANTHRO       
First Line: So much for metaphor. Those mounding clouds
Last Line: We know that. Something purposeful; authorial


APOLOGY       
First Line: I don't know what connects the different poetries
Last Line: Deserve a reading better than we bring. %and william matthews too


ARGUING BARTUSIAK    Poem Text    
First Line: The idea is, the marriage still exists
Subject(s): Marriage; Separation; Fidelity; Weddings; Husbands; Wives; Faithfulness; Constancy


ARGUING BARTUSIAK       
First Line: My idea is, the marriage still exists
Last Line: She wraps herself in that too


ARK OF THE COVENANT       
First Line: Out of golazed polymer resins: 'your choice of corals or blues'...The ark
Last Line: Yes, hre, and arcing over the bed, you might say as if in the sign of a covenant


ARMIES OF IGNORANCE POEM       
First Line: So now we've done our income tax
Last Line: And, lumphing and snortling behind them by hundreds: %tahr, tupaia, hoatzin, viscacha, topi, hyrax,
Subject(s): Income Tax


AROUND       
First Line: Sunrise sunset sunrise sunset sunrise
Last Line: In the book, she looks at the painting


ART HISTORY       
First Line: Their lives were solid, and so
Last Line: Drowns up to the wrist


AS RESPONSE       
First Line: This friend believes in god; and the light


ASSEMBLY    Poem Text    
First Line: That the wild call of water is a mystery but
Subject(s): God


ASSEMBLY       
First Line: That the wild call of water is a mystery but


ASSEMBLY LINE       
First Line: Bad decisions: his meeting with thalia, one of the younger
Last Line: #name?


ASTOUNDING       
First Line: Saucer lands in wisconsin field
Last Line: They've never seen anything so astounding


ASTRONOMY       
First Line: It dies. And a gazillion years in the future
Last Line: In silence for a while, in the light of that star


AT 5306       
First Line: Now that my father's dead, my mother -- pitterpats
Last Line: Back in years, and a column rises on either side %of the door, in the shape of a man in torn shoes


AT DEATH       
First Line: We don't know what escapes. Though
Last Line: In the secular dark, in the secular light


AT THE HEART    Poem Text    
First Line: And so I was sentenced to life in prison


AT THE HEART       
First Line: And so I was sentenced to life in prison


ATAVISM / BOWL       
First Line: And every night returning to the black


AWAY    Poem Text    
First Line: We think a blink it tiny but


AWAY       
First Line: We think a blink is tiny but
Last Line: Would row me away on the black sea %of that disappearing ink


BACK IN THE PARTITE FRACAS       


BAR CLICHE       
First Line: A tiara of antennae in the center of its noggin
Last Line: It was dividing into different countries and separate speech


BE A REPORTER HERSELF-WHY NOT? AND YET       
Last Line: Stream through the halls of local news are so


BE-AN-OTHER STRUCTURES       
First Line: The needlenosed defiance heats the dogtooth plains
Last Line: It needs to be broken by the paw of the world


BEAUTY OF ONE DAY'S TUMBLING-OFF-THE-CATWALK-ENDING       
Last Line: Rejected rejected rejected


BECAUSE IT HAPPENED    Poem Text    
First Line: A death-cry ripens, and rises - a boy's
Subject(s): Death - Children; Death - Babies


BECAUSE IT HAPPENED       
First Line: A death-cry ripens, and rises - a boy's
Last Line: Traces the shape of a chambered nautilus


BEFORE    Poem Text    
First Line: The class was history, that's
Subject(s): Ancestors & Ancestry


BEFORE       
First Line: The class was history, that's
Last Line: The message its salt


BELIEVING A RESONANT CHORT EXISTS BETWEEN HIS WORK AND...       
First Line: As to the whale's gullet I have been pleased to paint
Last Line: Level two. They're dancing, in red. %who is he to stop them?


BILINGUAL       
First Line: Somewhere along the line we were taught
Last Line: We're all the vast chasm. We're all the thin vine


BILL MATTHEWS       
First Line: Slub he used, and slur a lot, and blurred
Last Line: #name?
Subject(s): Friendship; Language


BIRDS       
First Line: The supposedly cheerful colors ob budgies
Last Line: A flock of birds, of wild birds, was flying overhead, %released from some terrible service


BLADE       
First Line: At one clear moment in history


BLANK WIDE FACE       
First Line: Would you like me to ead you a poem
Last Line: And wills what she needs to its surface


BLEEDING BOY       
Last Line: -on video, sucking'


BLUE FLOWERS    Poem Text    
First Line: Autumn, light's the world's list
Subject(s): Flowers


BODY       
Last Line: What lasts through that?


BOMBYKOL: 1.       
First Line: Three sweet jock guys and danalee, this great bodacious lesbo
Last Line: In a cubic yard, the long sculls of his feathery antennae %going crazy


BOMBYKOL: 2.       
First Line: In the 1700s, fellow entomologists sent specimens
Last Line: Than the period at the end of, and so on, and so forth, %etc


BOMBYKOL: 3.       
First Line: Stinger's real name is robert. That became bob
Last Line: Like a birdcage cover. Antoinette's red nest
Subject(s): Names


BONDS       
First Line: We rise from earth like taffy being pulled
Last Line: Years. Who else is he going to tell, if not her?


BOOK ABOUT REMBRANDT       
First Line: And then - for the siege had long before depleted their foods


BOOK OF HUMAN ANOMALIES       
First Line: Maud stevens received her first tattoo in 1904
Last Line: In and out of breath through our complex sleeps %astonishing
Subject(s): Alienation (social Psychology); Dissenters; Exiles; Marginality, Social


BOOK OF SPEEDY: 1.       
First Line: The far trees bristle up like a hairbrush
Last Line: Was as if something else was making itself heard through the donkey


BOOK OF SPEEDY: 2.       
First Line: Among the stunted duns and tans
Last Line: Supplicants thronging at various niches and altars: this mouth %is an oracle, this one not?


BOOK OF SPEEDY: 3.       
First Line: And the future is read in the slippery knots and inclines
Last Line: I once heard a blues harmonica player %insist his soul was in his spit


BOOK OF SPEEDY: 4.       
First Line: Thunder %breaks out of the deeply fulminous clouds
Last Line: Flesh in this poem, in this city, at any moment you think about %human suffering, there's suffering


BOOK OF SPEEDY: 5.       
First Line: That night there's a 'scene' in the bedroom. She
Last Line: Could think it as 'yes, %he'll protect us.'


BOOK OF SPEEDY: 6.       
First Line: And the battle is fought in the filamental flash
Last Line: Try telling this woman curled in her bed despairing %tell the biopsy slide


BOOK OF SPEEDY: 7.       
First Line: The reverend patrick bronte, wishing to know more about
Last Line: And out of the woman, a song


BOOKS/P,L,E       
First Line: The usual troubles stumble in, in the usual morning light
Last Line: I'm stamping their notebook complete


BOTTLE. SO THEY KNEW HIS WEAKNESS       
Last Line: He laughed. And that was unwise


BRAIN FISHED THROUGH THE NOSTRILS       
Last Line: The everlasting range of human hungers: still requires


BRANCH: 1. RELATIVES       
First Line: This means even saint catherine of siena, who drank
Last Line: Who died in childhood; maybe even the ghost
Subject(s): Family Life


BRANCH: 2. DWELLING       
First Line: This winter air could crack, this winter night is like a black shell
Last Line: Passing a kiln. Not its kiln, maybe. But, still: a kiln, %a family dwelling
Subject(s): Houses


BRANCH: 3. RELATIVES       
First Line: And the problem is we want to be a 'self,' a pure
Last Line: In the deeps of the pacific: our cousins, contacting us
Subject(s): Family Life; Self


BRANCH: 4. TREE       
First Line: Even the mutual lust of the moon and the waters
Last Line: With the almond-oval, purple eyes
Subject(s): Trees


BRANCH: 5. RELATIVES       
First Line: That year, the kirkhill orphanage released his set of documents
Last Line: Is the original endometrium. Even the haze and the lights
Subject(s): Family Life


BRIEF, SYMBOLIC HISTORY OF THE TWO OPPOSED FORCES ..............       
First Line: Later, in europe, paper mills %will thrive, will nearly colonize
Last Line: That dates back more than a hundred years


BRIGHT MOTES IN THE CORNER OF YOUR EYE       
First Line: His telling about the islands makes me think
Last Line: Finally all of them were the same


BROTHERLY    Poem Text    
First Line: And wasn't he the one that flew? And wasn't he the one
Subject(s): Self; Dreams; Nightmares


BRUNO'S PLACE       
First Line: This 'planet' is a baked clay pancake
Last Line: His life, its history of error, its grit and volts, %and then how to get on with it


BUDGET TRAVEL THROUGH THE UNIVERSE       
First Line: We can rig a supernova in a single laptop jiffy
Last Line: And beached on a foreign shore


BURDEN OF MODERNITY': THE BOOK, THE GOD, THE CHILD       
First Line: United airlines check-in: and the line is arranged
Last Line: Running through the tunnels of what was rejected
Subject(s): Books; Children; God


BY ONE       
First Line: That's all it requires. The law of even
Last Line: One wheel to steer by


CALL 1-800-THE-LOST       
First Line: And whenever we see a flower that's red
Last Line: In the miraculous everyday afternoon light


CAMERA LUCIDA       
First Line: Night: the birds
Last Line: Night, it's a time of interlockings


CAN'T, 'NESSA. YOU CANNOT KEEP ON       
Last Line: Think how I feel, I'm your sis


CANCELING OUT       
First Line: What my catholic cronies call original sin
Last Line: Across the linoleum. 'here. Take a load off your feet.'


CANCELING OUT       
First Line: What my catholic cronies call original sin
Last Line: Across the linoleum. 'here. Take a load off your feet'


CANYON GORGE ARROYO    Poem Text    
First Line: How many other codices
Subject(s): Canyons; Death; Earth; Grandparents; Tradition; Dead, The; World; Grandmothers; Grandfathers; Great Grandfathers; Great Grandmothers


CANYON GORGE ARROYO       
First Line: How many other codices
Last Line: And I studied %I could read him like an open book
Subject(s): Canyons; Death; Earth; Grandparents; Tradition


CANYON GORGE, ARROYO       
First Line: How many other codices %and folios are stored down there
Last Line: I could read him like an open book


CATHAY       
First Line: That same year, columbus


CHANGES: 1       
First Line: The clouds split open, soft, like the morning bread
Last Line: (he's pleased that this poem changed at the asterisk)


CHANGES: 2       
First Line: If we place the classic ratfaced, red-shorts 1930s mickey
Last Line: Of cloudy water flying back compactly to an aspirin again


CHANGES: 3       
First Line: In a mid-manhattan art museum, a woman is carefully loving
Last Line: Manatee: mermaid


CHANGES: 4       
First Line: There's a joke about a hen that eats a dollar bill each night
Last Line: To his widely admired 'trees in snow'


CHEESE       
First Line: We know now it'll kill you
Last Line: What the photographer has us say


CHEYENNE WAS RAISED BY INDIANS ..., FR. THE MUTLIVERSE       


CHILDREN OF ELMER       
First Line: Somewhere as I write this, sandi ybarra, 12, is happy or
Last Line: ...As if I were the guardian of those small stamped %expiration dates. As if I could preserve them


CHILDREN/EXPEDIENCIES       
First Line: The purpose of a pen: to write
Last Line: Brandy through the nib of a fountain pen'


CIRCA 1861    Poem Text    
First Line: Mother? I'm here again to freshen the water - lots
Subject(s): :dickinson, Emily (1830-1886); Radio


CIRCA 1861       
First Line: Mother? I'm here again to freshen the water: - lots
Last Line: We feel like weeping: the news is piercing our hearts


CIVILIZED LIFE       
First Line: She moves like smoky honey, like electric smoky honey, and
Last Line: Their animal hollering given containment


CLOSER    Poem Text    
First Line: Lucifer,' a student once wrote, 'fell


COCK    Poem Text    
First Line: A month before his dinner with the visiting spanish lawyer,
Subject(s): Darwin, Charles (1809-1882); Religion; Fathers & Sons; Lesbians; Theology


COLLECTING: AN ESSAY       
First Line: In the 'fuckee bars' of that oriental city, floor girls
Last Line: I say unto you: at the end, all of us - couriers.'


COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL/LITTLETON,CO       
First Line: Here, thirteen high school students died
Last Line: Might hold this drink, %might take it into our systems


COME TO. AND WISHED HE HADN'T. THE PAIN       
Last Line: In the middle of the worked-out continuity


COMPASSES       
First Line: If the past will be seen to validate a current national image
Last Line: Clink together inside a velvet bag on the fat hip of power


CONJUGAL BEAUTY       
First Line: One cop is up to literally his keester
Last Line: His brother mycroft, puzzling out the same misdeeds through 'ratiocination' alone


CONJUGAL BEAUTY       
First Line: One cop is up to literally his keester
Last Line: Persuaded. He'd have done it %differently, if he'd been there, if he straddled the beast


CONTINUUM: 1       
First Line: Well, I went went went to heaven, baby baby
Last Line: (de doop de doop de doop, ba, de doop de doop)


CONTINUUM: 1.       
First Line: Well I went went went to heaven, baby baby
Last Line: (de doop de doop de doop, ba, de doop de doop)


CONTINUUM: 2       
First Line: Once you have a chair
Last Line: Where none had been before, from out of nowhere: %a chair


CONTINUUM: 2.       
First Line: Once you have a chair
Last Line: Where none had been before, from out of nowhere: %a chair


CONTINUUM: 3       
First Line: One tick-one putz's little sizzle of hate
Last Line: Mommy,' he pointed, 'those chairs are carrying the river!'


CONTINUUM: 3.       
First Line: One tick-one putz's little sizzle of hate
Last Line: Mommy,' he pointed, 'those chairs are carrying the river


CONTINUUM: 4. A SONG ABOUT COLONIAL TIMES       
First Line: #name?
Last Line: Throgh a milking stoole, or my plain cheayr


CONTINUUM: 4. A SONG ABOUT COLONIAL TIMES       
First Line: #name?
Last Line: Throgh a milking stoole, or my plain cheayr'


CONTINUUM: 5       
First Line: Also, in 1673, the goodwife faithine winterhorpe, who fell asleep while
Last Line: In mind. Among its many lovely implications, this: there might be hope for %all of us


CONTINUUM: 5.       
First Line: Also, in 1673, the goodwife faithine winterthorpe, who fell
Last Line: Implications, this: there might be hope for all of us


CONTINUUM: 6       
First Line: The denizens of heaven have no bodies
Last Line: I see them cavorting around the rim of that yeasty rink


CONTINUUM: 6.       
First Line: The denizens of heaven have no bodies
Last Line: I see them cavorting around the rim of that yeasty rink


CONTINUUM: 7. THE FURNITURE MAKERS HAVE THREE PATRON SAINTS       
First Line: Thank you for the shield-back chair and the ladder-back chair
Last Line: Saint victor, saint joseph, saint anne


CONTINUUM: 8       
First Line: In just a few minutes the cleanup crew
Last Line: That sliver from its silver-inlaid memorial box and sets it, %a chair, at their table


CONTINUUM: 8.       
First Line: In just a few minutes the clean-up crew
Last Line: A chair, at their table


CORD       
First Line: What can I compare them to, five years later, except their child
Last Line: To sever it, quicker and worse


COSMOLOGY OF EMPTY       
First Line: This might explain why the original dot
Last Line: Neither of them speaking a word


COUNTERFEIT EARTH!       
First Line: It's 2157. Two adventuring spacemen rocketing home
Last Line: Zen: the writing is the wall
Subject(s): Popular Culture - United States


COUNTERVALENT LAZE       
First Line: I don't care about that book on 'aggressiveness training'
Last Line: Uncomplicated alphaomega electron home


CREATURES OF THE ABYSS       
First Line: Not for me, the easy loves and death-throes
Last Line: With a small light dangling in front of them


CROSS-COUNTRY, & MOTIF APPEARS       
First Line: The volks grows close as a skullcap
Last Line: Luck, also clinging to a face


CROWN AND PLATE AND BRIDGE       
First Line: It's hidden in the haggis or the ratatouille
Last Line: I think I could do something with that


CUP       
First Line: Toward the end, when the pain from the cancer
Last Line: The lord's return with a nice cup of tea.' but %the meant it; she was steeped in it


DAILY, MORE OFTEN THAN WHITE HOUSE WATCH OR SPORTS       
Last Line: When I do, a few of vera's exploits


DANCING       
First Line: In this part of town they stack their flat round corncakes
Last Line: The molecules won't allow it


DANIELLE SUITE    Poem Text    
First Line: The real story is: that they


DATING REPORT       
First Line: Don calls, to tell me about a woman he's dating
Last Line: The waters pouring in between


DAYS WITH THE FAMILY REALIST       
First Line: A doorknob on a chicken
Last Line: Bank heists, moon shots, deathless poems,. %go milk a fish she also said


DAZZLE       
First Line: Dare ya, this was kansas


DEAR POETRY:    Poem Text    
First Line: Well, my mailbox has been visited
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets


DEEP AND CRAVING HUNGER ... FOR THE PAST       
First Line: And so she looked back. Remembering


DEER       
First Line: Gumshoes, shamuses, private-eyes, -dicks, ops, are terms
Last Line: Now I turn back to my mother's bed on july 23rd 1995


DESERT SONG       
First Line: They tongued my mons -- the animals; and
Last Line: And lot before them, before I turned


DIAGRAMS    Poem Text    
First Line: What encourages our belief in the screw as a diagram


DIME CALL       
First Line: Dead jews, dead jews, just points now an underground %telephone cable
Last Line: Till my head rings %till they tell me


DISCARDS: 1. THE JUNKSHOP OF SCIENTIFIC SPECULATION       
First Line: Faces a neighborhood that, like all of the clockwork models
Last Line: That shivered like a leaf, but that was long ago. A leaf, then %just this dimness


DISCARDS: 2. TASHLICH       
First Line: But tashlich is simpler, if similarly
Last Line: Of the people I've needed to kill %in order to get here


DISCARDS: 3. BUTTONED-TIGHT SUIT       
First Line: Tomorrow I'm going to take the stove to the doctor's.'
Last Line: Curling up there, through the long night, %with the homunculus in his buttoned-tight suit


DNA       
First Line: And there, in the desert of zin, the children did thirst
Last Line: And down to meet the ocean?


DOCTOR NITTY-GRITTY       
First Line: The voices of friends in turmoil, over the voices of yesterday's friends
Last Line: From another twenty-four hours of mulch, a loveliness blossoms


DOLPHIN: MONOLOGUE & SONG       
First Line: Once I approached you
Subject(s): Environment; Sea Monsters


DONALD DUCK IN DANISH       
First Line: This woman's tongue is being torn out. Yes. And I'm not being
Last Line: The duck sign. Then a kiss. Slut. (the end


DONE       
First Line: I'm done. I've finished writing a poem
Last Line: Of tiny clips that must be %necessary for somebody's industry


DOUBLES       
First Line: In an earlier version, I had him voyaging home
Last Line: How wonderful that the damp sand carried for ballast doubles as coolant, too


DRUGSTORE, 1958       
First Line: Just walk right in and demand your
Last Line: Aren't even made of the same material


DURER    Poem Text    
First Line: The dessicated flukes of a whale. A leech so
Subject(s): Durer, Albrecht (1471-1528)


DURER       
First Line: The dessicated flukes of a whale. A leech so
Subject(s): Durer, Albrecht (1471-1528)


DYING AWAY FROM YOU       
First Line: A fire siren in san antonio. Long smoke
Last Line: We're both her old, easing voice


D_L_'S       
First Line: There might be a planet. Before that
Last Line: The story of before-is recited


D____ L____€™S    Poem Text    
First Line: There might be a planet. Before that,
Subject(s): Ancestors & Ancestry


EARLIEST PUNCTUATION       
First Line: It's like the midwife's knife


ECSTASY       
First Line: But not what you're thinking. Ecstasy originally: ex, 'out of,' +
Last Line: And flew directly away from the promise of light and honey


EDGEWATER HOSPITAL    Poem Text    
First Line: Keeps a different time. Across the street, lake michigan folds
Subject(s): Hospitals


EFFECT OVER DISTANCE    Poem Text    
First Line: The six-foot indigo plumes of the 'sacred necropolis bird
Subject(s): Childhood Memories; Public Worship; Jews; Church Attendance; Judaism


EFFECT OVER DISTANCE       
First Line: The six-foot indigo plumes of the sacred necropolis bird
Last Line: I sat there on fire, I sat there burning into the starry future


ELBEE NOVELTY COMPANY INC.    Poem Text    
First Line: For I have seen louie berkie in his warehouse rows of plastic
Subject(s): Business; Businessmen; Businesswomen


ELBEE NOVELTY COMPANY INC.       
First Line: For I have seen louie berkie in his warehouse rows of plastic
Last Line: The silence, right? I know, I live alone. Here, shake my hand on it
Subject(s): Business


ELEMENTS       
First Line: The cool, dusk-blue of the shadows of these dutch plums


ELLIS       
First Line: The story of america's poor is a cheap whack
Last Line: From the deep meat hert of her


EMERGENCE OF FLIGHT FROM ARISTOTLE'S MUD       
First Line: You bitch, you sonofabitch, you flaming bitch-on-wheels
Last Line: Stupidly after it as it fluttered, rose, and was lost %to sight: its sky-blue silk in the blue of th


ENGRAVINGS IN THE BOOKS OF THE 17TH CENTURY SCIENTIST/MYSTIC       
First Line: Beryllium is there. Styrofoam is there. The circuitry
Last Line: And asking the gods she knows, what's the deal


ENORMOUS ELECTRO-MAGNET IS USED TO STEAL THE WORLD'S ELECTRICITY       
First Line: Elsewhere, drowned atlantis is found (populated
Last Line: In a premise as tough as monogamy


ENTIRE LIVES       
First Line: If only the simple indigenes of the place disported themselves
Last Line: Her mother is swinging the iron in its dark wonderful arc


ESTHER       
First Line: To the house of king, fist, whip, molestar
Last Line: Let me put in a word for him


ETRUSACAN       
First Line: Xzn'g yv ivzw yb zmb nzm li dlnzm orfermt
Last Line: Bluish-gray and a layer of airy meringue: two bodies, all night, coupled together in darkness, whisp


EXHIBIT HALL       
First Line: These aren't marble knee boots, this
Last Line: As if it were bequeathed us


EXORCISM       
First Line: What's the restless djinn inside she's washing away
Last Line: There isn't enough white porcelain in the world


EXPLANATION       
First Line: Supposedly I was babysitting for bernie and lorrie isaacson
Last Line: To dabble in paleontology


EXPLANATION       
First Line: They say this really happened, in the church of eternal light


EYE OF BEHOLDER       
First Line: Got the money?-then jo-boy is your go-to neighborhood
Last Line: God see?-this is her daughter


FAHRENHEIT 451       
First Line: There's a series of mystery novels
Last Line: Among them, to disgrace them if it should be found


FAMILY/GROVE       
First Line: It's common to say of bad acting, or family photos like these
Last Line: The very light we see by held steady, longer than even a life, in the grain


FAMOUS BRIDGES       
First Line: For most of us, I suppose, the learning of what


FANG       
First Line: They both remember the throat
Last Line: That ever stabbed us %the tooth of a wolf


FANTASY TOY       
First Line: Biting the coin: is it fit
Last Line: They dance out the door in one another's arms


FAR       
First Line: A docu-film from 1912: a shaman %of the western steppes is 'traveling
Last Line: She pointed where the thread dropped out. %'it's visiting the other side'


FAR : AN ETYMOLOGY       
First Line: One who goes far ways': a way-'far'er; or sea
Last Line: It's still alive...It screams then, %bringing it closer


FARDER TO REACHE       
First Line: Kepler was born in 1571. He knew about as much of the night sky and
Last Line: Disappears-which is, of course, the day clearing its throat for speech.


FEELERS       
First Line: A brick is floating around the room
Last Line: Even stone is impressionable


FELLOWSHIP OF THE FIRST MARSHMALLOW       
First Line: Outside of bunny's brew city pub
Last Line: Hey, brother dog' I nod to him. %'hiya guy' he says


FILM       
First Line: It's strangely like a man


FINELY WRITTEN LABELS    Poem Text    
First Line: It isn't enough we knolw these pains
Subject(s): Language; Words; Vocabulary


FINELY WRITTEN LABELS       
First Line: It isn't enough we know this pain
Last Line: Botanical garden denizens - loved, by %which I mean: brought into language


FIVE POUNDS       
First Line: But aren't all prayers aerosol?-they leave
Last Line: And that cloud, with its skin of a thousand wings


FLORID STORY       
First Line: That butcher apron stood on its own
Last Line: Humming now, she's pummeling it in the brutal and gentle water


FLOWRES OF KOONWARRA       
First Line: No. A tannish gray fossil
Last Line: Surley they lay themselves %down in exactly these flowers


FLUID, DRUID; ENAMEL, CAMEL-'JIVE'       
Last Line: #name?


FLUTE / THE TEN LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL       
First Line: A man will -- fizz is the closest word, it will feel as if his
Last Line: Of them, we're here now, go live your life, we're not lost


FOE, SHARPSHOOTER, MISS DRAGONSCLAW       
Last Line: And clipped to save in a file


FOR WHAT'S AT HAND       
First Line: Enter paul blaisdell. And from a carn of latex
Last Line: Stuffed the pharaoh's nostrils with peppercorns


FOURTEEN PAGES    Poem Text    
Subject(s): Fathers; Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan (1859-1930); Books & Reading


FROM THE BOOK       
First Line: This is the book of losers, the guiness of thoroughbreds
Last Line: Brought her, epoch by epoch, to what was our earth


FROM THE MOON       
First Line: The gizmos bollix up a line, and
Last Line: Hey! You call that closure?' she said


FUTURES       
First Line: The sky is nearly plaided with the speedy traffic
Last Line: Would never be allowed. After all, the battle is never over;%there's so much left to be done


GALLERY    Poem Text    
First Line: When my grandfather stepped from the boat
Last Line: And pretty as a picture
Subject(s): Loss; Moving & Movers; Refugees; United States - Immigration & Emigtration


GALLERY       
First Line: When my grandfather stepped from the boat
Last Line: And pretty as a picture
Subject(s): Loss; Moving And Movers; Refugees; U.s. - Immigration And Emigration


GAMMA       
First Line: Good morning' is a message, if a simple one
Last Line: The morning is good


GAS       
First Line: That year, my mother was dying. And other things
Last Line: Behind you say it's time to step on it buddy and go
Subject(s): Automobiles - Service Stations; Gasoline; Memory


GEESE       
First Line: On a brittle winter afternoon in moscow, the american
Last Line: Too, although we never see it happening' %-- a thread in the lining
Subject(s): Houdini, Harry (1874-1926); Jews; Russia


GEESE       
First Line: On a brittle winter afternoon in moscow, the american
Last Line: Too, although we never see it happening' %-a thread in the lining


GEESE JAZZ       
First Line: And time, that river, erodes away
Last Line: The river, the geese overhead


GENERATIONS: 'DUO TRIED KILLING MAN WITH BACON'       
First Line: At tornado force, a full length of uncooked spaghetti
Last Line: Stared down, as if our lives depended on this


GENERATIONS: ***!!!THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY!!!***       
First Line: The handbills shrill, in searing orange-crimsons. Any century
Last Line: - each, beseeching allegiance. %earth; and air


GENERATIONS: CON CARNE       
First Line: My father had worked ten-hour days from when he'd turned sixteen
Last Line: But that, as my reticent family says when pressed. Is another story


GENERATIONS: THE FICTION SHELF       
First Line: The swiss watch isn't ticking for a week, before
Last Line: - she's spirited back to the land of isn't


GESTURE MADE IN THE MARTIAN WASTES       
First Line: Ancient earth's a boomboom afternoon
Last Line: And our on-loan solar resplendence


GETTING TO SEE       
First Line: And at 3 a.M., december 26th, at the 24-7
Last Line: To see the dna of the city recombine


GIOTTO: SAINT FRANCIS PREACHING TO THE BIRDS: ABOUT1300       
First Line: He also preached to the wolves and the fishes


GIRL WHO MARRIED A WOODEN POUNDER       
First Line: All morning and then through the rise
Last Line: Some splinters of the other


GIVERNY       
First Line: Though sometimes, by the end, the farm becomes your own


GLASS       
First Line: Once in another country they numbered his arm
Last Line: And the border is never more than this glass


GLASS       
First Line: #name?
Last Line: That was also the moment his reason shattered
Subject(s): Glass And Glassblowers


GOAT/CAT/DOG    Poem Text    
First Line: Two rapscallion nannies


GODZILLAS       
First Line: Every building fibrillates. The army tanks and the submarines
Last Line: A boy and his plastic dimestore dinosaur


GOING BACK       
First Line: And what did he wear? A white hat
Last Line: For we say our blessings over you


GOING IN COMING OUT       
First Line: Now we will have to enter it


GOING NOWHERE       
Last Line: Ted venture, jungle explorer: rejected


GOLD / SILK       
First Line: An uncle whose business was cufflink


GOLD NOTE LOUNGE       
First Line: She was a smoky-throated eel-boned woman, that's
Last Line: And we slick back our greased wings of hair %and enter our own night of dancing


GOLIATH AND THE BARBARIANS       
First Line: Even the atom is a tension
Last Line: The way it did at the first mitosis
Subject(s): Goliath


GRANDMA'S       
First Line: Name was rose. Every evening
Last Line: Preserved at her page


GREAT ONES       
First Line: Thunderclaps (inside of which an intercontinental flight's a toothpick
Last Line: The heavens weep, to ask for something, manna, stars, %so modest as reprieve


GREAT TOPICS OF THE WORLD       
First Line: Who are they battling now? The bedouin nomads
Last Line: As if these were the great topics of the world


GREED SONG       
First Line: Today, I want %everything. It's not
Last Line: Through the dark ducts. %and I want the ducts


GULF       
First Line: At a certain season, and with
Last Line: Under sea-wind that blows without end %from the gulf


GUNSHOT IN THE PARKING LOT       
First Line: Is a pop in that vast public space, a dot
Last Line: To me!' her voice lost in the general din and disdain


HAIR PIECES       
First Line: The four-year-old is sleeping %in the field, and a butterfly
Last Line: He's calling us to worship %the moment, fleeting though it is


HAM(S)       
First Line: Everyone remembers when naomi slowly
Last Line: As both the cattle and the prod


HARDY BOYS' DETECTIVE HANDBOOK (1959): 1. TAPS       
First Line: Hooligans sapped the shamus and lammed with the swag
Last Line: --of what? Not that can't b/ clamp


HARDY BOYS' DETECTIVE HANDBOOK (1959): 1. TAPS       
First Line: Hooligans sapped the shamus and lammed with the swag
Last Line: -of what? No that can't b/ clamp


HARDY BOYS' DETECTIVE HANDBOOK (1959): 2. PERPVIC       
First Line: One, she loosely based on the faux (yet still expensive) celadon ming vase
Last Line: It dirty before it leave the mint'


HARDY BOYS' DETECTIVE HANDBOOK (1959): 3. CONFUSION       
First Line: Joe knows he has 'the hot pants' for iola (erotic attraction
Last Line: (chapter xii), he's at last confessing the truth


HARDY BOYS' DETECTIVE HANDBOOK (1959): 3. CONFUSION       
First Line: Joe knows he has 'the hot pants' for iola (erotic attraction)
Last Line: (chapter 12), he's at last confessing the truth


HARDY BOYS' DETECTIVE HANDBOOK (1959): 4. MIRROR       
First Line: She remembers the fragrance released from cut white pine
Last Line: With fifty dollars a day; but a good joe after all'


HARDY BOYS' DETECTIVE HANDBOOK (1959): 4. MIRROR       
First Line: She remembers the fragrance released from cut white pine
Last Line: With fifty dollars a day; but a good joe after all


HARDY BOYS' DETECTIVE HANDBOOK (1959): 5. GOOD       
First Line: The whispers motel: rooms by the hour is sometimes known to rent rooms
Last Line: And slips inside his kickass tapshoe-soled black boots


HARDY BOYS' DETECTIVE HANDBOOK (1959): 5. GOOD       
First Line: The whispers motel: rooms by the hour is sometimes known to rent rooms
Last Line: And slips inside his kick-ass tapshoe-soled black boots


HE HAS    Poem Text    
First Line: The high-boned taut-toned moody ink-eyes beauty
Subject(s): Eyes


HE WAS READING THE GREAT JEWISH MYSTICS       
First Line: And light was a body. Then another said the body was
Last Line: You could weep: such passion, such balance


HEART HEART HEART HEART HEART HEART HEART       
First Line: And that's the truth of it, the truth of the far perimeters
Last Line: And everything below the insects...Meet, becoming the other


HEAVEN       
First Line: At anghor, in cambodia, the great stone face of a god reposes
Last Line: And beseeds. A god so vined, the vine itself might be the god


HELLO, COLE? WE LIKE THIS NEW       
Last Line: Do the same, of course, remember


HELLO?-OH       
Last Line: Ohmygod


HER LITERAL ONE       
First Line: As for the light - it was a city light
Last Line: To the difficult needs of her literal one
Subject(s): Relationships


HEW SWEETIE    Poem Text    
First Line: The things we call women! Housewife, honey
Subject(s): Women; Names


HEY SWEETIE       
First Line: The things we call women! Housewife, honey
Last Line: Angel and who's to say he's not right


HIERARCHY, LOWERARCHY       
First Line: Two a.M. The dog barks in the yard, and so
Last Line: #name?


HISTORY       
First Line: The trip was arduous, but it had happened
Last Line: An equal number of nuggets of salt


HISTORY       
First Line: The deliverers back, the people would each receive a token
Last Line: This necessary taste that called to their saliva


HISTORY AS HORSE LIGHT    Poem Text    
First Line: It ended at the time of hiroshima. Everything
Subject(s): Environment; Nature; Environmental Protection; Ecology; Conservation


HISTORY AS HORSE LIGHT       
First Line: It ended at the time of hiroshima. Everything
Last Line: A skillet sputtering %brilliant greases, pure and imageless,down the dark
Subject(s): Environment; Nature


HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION       
First Line: In the dating bar, the potted ferns lean down
Last Line: In the fern bar a hand tries a knee, as if unplanned


HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY       
First Line: Everything was bleak then, and
Last Line: They did it by hand


HOW EASY IT IS       
First Line: A family is murdered: husband, wife
Last Line: To the sides of her face, as if he's actually hurt her there


HOW FAST       
First Line: This is how fast: you place the speed of a bullet


HOW I WANT TO GO       
First Line: One way would be %almost without transition: water
Last Line: Leaves the leg of a crab


HOW SIMILE WORKS    Poem Text    
First Line: The drizzle-slicked cobblestone alleys
Subject(s): Marital Love


HOW THE WORLD WORKS: AN ESSAY       
First Line: That's my topic. How complex, alhambran arabesques of weather
Last Line: Ever had really, or ever would, work


HOW WE DO IT       
First Line: Another day, shuffled out of the deck


HUM       
First Line: Now: sun through the blinds


HUMAN BEAUTY    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: If you write a poem about love
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets


HUMAN BEAUTY       
First Line: If you write a poem about love
Last Line: Inside what it was a praise of


HUMDINGERS KNEESLAPPERS SIDESPLITTERS & YUKS       
First Line: We were lost. And were on the pitted edge
Last Line: The moment's sustenance we made in making that grill %a promo slogan: we serve all manna of food


HUNT       
First Line: A sheaf of some. Some (like mrs. Browning's).


I LEARN I'M 96 PERCENT WATER       
First Line: And stare out over the edge of this little
Last Line: The body bobs in its life


I REMEMBER, FROM MY CHILDHOOD, SEEING THE MINERS       
Last Line: There at the last of the cancer


IF WE WERE HONEST    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: When I tell you that cultural ritual is an artifice
Subject(s): Sex


IMPS    Poem Text    


IN ONE NIGHT        Recitation by Author
Subject(s): Brassieres


IN ONE NIGHT       
First Line: They're going at it, whoever 'they' are on the other side
Last Line: The bra of neutrinos. The bra of the beast


IN PRAISE OF THE BATHOS       
First Line: Immediately, the fine, rose line of sunrise is as solid as a shawl
Last Line: Of our foreknowledge of death, that sets us loving madly


IN THE MIDST OF INTRUSIVE RICHNESS    Poem Text    
First Line: Buzzing the language of batteries, a batteryesque


IN THE MIDST OF INTRUSIVE RICHNESS       
First Line: Buzzing the language of batteries, a batterytype


IN THE X-RAY OF THE SARCOPHAGUS OF TA-PERO       
First Line: Of the twenty-second dynasty, we see the skull
Last Line: Long way and still has so far to go


INSIDE    Poem Text    
First Line: What was he? Not retarded, not autistic
Subject(s): Intelligence


INSIDE       
First Line: What was he?-not 'retarded,' not 'autistic'
Last Line: Would lie down together alongside the lion and lamb


INSUFFICIENCY       
First Line: The traditional chinese tale of 'the ideal scholar'
Last Line: It needs to curl around, end to end, %and enter itself?


INTERMEDIARIES       
First Line: Angels, in most cultures
Last Line: The thought of a man; a man, the thought of an angel


INTIMATE PAST       
First Line: Sally's story: people came to her for 'trauma resolution'
Last Line: She'd wake up in their arms self-baptized: new and damp and salacious


INTO THAT STORY: 1       
First Line: It's dawn. The ancient greek warriors strap on
Last Line: This writing is my singing


INTO THAT STORY: 2       
First Line: Throw him into a room on the funny farm'
Last Line: Language like that you don't forget


INTO THAT STORY: 3       
First Line: Except we do forget
Last Line: To lose its definition


INTO THAT STORY: 4       
First Line: And even at six, I knew the neighbors'
Last Line: Dinosaur: gas tank: emissions-is that it?


INTO THAT STORY: 5       
First Line: In someone's version of four missing days, the aliens
Last Line: Into the melanin of the evening


INTO THAT STORY: 6       
First Line: But it wasn't a deer
Last Line: The radiant heat of that belly?


INTO THAT STORY: 7       
First Line: A light wave. What? A kiss, a 'french kiss,' sloppy
Last Line: Already, he's dissolved into that story


INTO THE LIVES OF OTHER PEOPLE       
First Line: Half-waif, half-woman, at fourteen norma
Last Line: And the planter of wandering jew was a japanese microphone
Subject(s): Life; Meditation; Women


INVISIBLE       
First Line: The parents are fucking. The parents are discussing
Last Line: On which we walk through their cities
Subject(s): Change; Relationships


INVISIBLE WORLD       
First Line: This might explain ghosts, or esp: the stuff of us is worth more
Last Line: Teasing it, for night after night, with the foam hem of her %flamenco dress


INVOCATION       
First Line: There are nights when we've all wanted that
Last Line: That the corresponding italian lips %will issue some word offeedback?


IT HAPPENS       
Last Line: It was never local news


IT'S TWENTY DEGREES, AND IT'S SNOWING, AND I'M IN MY       
First Line: Molly oodle: an unpublished novel by
Last Line: My lady-seraph of infinite light. %I call her molly oodle


JAN. 31ST: DEGREES OF THE SAME THING       
First Line: The astrophysicist said %that what we are is walking carbon-that we're
Last Line: Maze of that ear with a piercing, intimate whisper


JEFF OF MUTT AND JEFF LEANS ON AIR       
First Line: The very earlist animators
Last Line: To its elbow in this world's water. He looks at his hand... %our hands; and what they do; and how im


JERKS SHE HAS TO PUT UP WITH. ONE LAST       
Last Line: For enthusing over its can-do eponymous


JODI       
First Line: Their major god: the giant clam
Last Line: In the shape of the child who bore it all day


KANSAS: STORIES       
First Line: The twining withes of incense-smoke at the mouth of the oracle cave
Last Line: I think she'd use it to store things in, like a box


KEATS' PHRASE    Poem Text    
Subject(s): Emptiness


KHIRBET SHEMA       
First Line: Because I lost the captions, this aerial view
Last Line: It's the same light, either way, she feels lift her


KNEES / DURA-EUROPOS: 2. 1982-83       
First Line: When emily died -- my sister-in-law, at 34
Last Line: It feeds on, and leads to %perpetual self


KNEES / DURA-EUROPOS: 3. ANYTIME       
First Line: Listen: another story of during a war -- so faceless
Last Line: I'm keeping on praying despite my god


KNEES; DURA-EUROPOS       
First Line: This is what's happening now: it's raining, mean
Last Line: Of the same attentive maker, that will allow all this
Variant Title(s): Knees / Dura-europos: 1. 255 A.d


KNIFE THROUGH THE HEAD (YOUR DISTRESSES AND MINE)       
First Line: When nona phoned, her stomach was already little more
Last Line: Room in the world of a thousand selves of the one self


KNOCK ON THE DOOR       
Last Line: Then the cops are called


LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE    Poem Text    
First Line: The renewal project is doomed: because
Subject(s): Relationships


LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE       
First Line: The renewal project is doomed: because
Last Line: From floating off into the nothing


LEAVE FOOTPRINTS, HANRAHAN SAID       
Last Line: Big kabooshkie, hanrahan told him


LET'S GO OVER IT ONCE MORE, MAC       
Last Line: I don't remember


LET'S VISIT A TOY FACTORY!       
First Line: Oboy! But, although the toys are smiling
Last Line: Waiting for them to enter, to start the great work %of hurting somebody


LETTER       
First Line: At the end of a day that's rubble around me


LETTER TO FRIENDS EAST AND WEST       
First Line: What's new? I'm still in illinois,
Last Line: How could it not be true?


LIBRARY    Poem Text    
First Line: This book saved my life.
Subject(s): Books & Reading


LIBRARY       
First Line: This book saved my life
Last Line: This book is going to save the world


LIFE IS HAPPY       
First Line: I suddenly understand: I'm watching you chop away
Last Line: Its dearly off-key humming


LITTLE, BIG       
First Line: Words I'd like to get into a poem
Last Line: And gently, almost powering it, the ombudsman moon %ameliorates the naked light of the sun


LITTLE/BIG       
First Line: The basic human oomph won't change
Last Line: That's moored for the whole of the night to the floating carcass of a whale


LIVES OF THE -- WHA'?       
First Line: No punishment deterred her
Last Line: Reclaiming husbands here, and husbands greeting wives


LIVES OF THE ARTISTS       
First Line: She accomplished the incredible feat of painting
Last Line: Turn. The risk. The call of accuracy. To witness


LOCAL NEWS       
Last Line: We learn to call the news


LOCAL NEWS       
Last Line: The shadows: gone


LOCAL NEWS       
Last Line: My chicago view of things


LOT'S WIFE       
First Line: You wouldn't recognize her now
Last Line: She is here when we pour in our sleep


LULLABY    Poem Text    
First Line: Sleep, little beansprout


LULLABYE       
First Line: Sleep, little beansprout
Last Line: Sleep, little dillseed %don't be afraid %the moon is the sunlight %ricocheted


MAGICIAN; SPACE SWASHBUCKLER FLASH       
Last Line: Could be counted on


MALOKHIM       
First Line: Often the sky is divided as neat as livingroom drapes
Last Line: Once the angels walked the earth; %now they aren't even in heaven


MAN A KNIFE       
Last Line: Good night, charlene'


MANLEY? YOU KNOW...IF ANYTHING HAPPENS...       
Last Line: Explode in his face? Who hasn't


MANTRAS       
First Line: The neurologist: we're eloquent meat, evolved
Last Line: Homunculus in its buttoned-up suit


MARBLE-SIZED STONE    Poem Text    
First Line: Does she love you? She says yes, but really
Subject(s): Love; Illness


MARRIAGE, AND OTHER SCIENCE FICTION       
First Line: A millipede-thing the size of a brahma bull is devouring
Last Line: A 'watch,' they called it: two hands held a face


MARRIED IN THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD       
First Line: Negative proof, as in: you believe
Last Line: Like crazy at the door when she comes back
Subject(s): Animals; Dogs


MATCHBOX       
First Line: The sun is filtered down to amber webwork


MATTERS       
First Line: What do they know, in this tumbleslat
Last Line: They know it matters


MAYPURES       
First Line: And so a lacquered, giltwork wooden globe
Last Line: A little star. In this case, one whose heart burns up %in reference to nothing


MEOP       
First Line: The scenario is: I'm six, and an invincible venusian army of robots
Last Line: They froze you in light. The other you went on, dying


MEOP: 1       
First Line: The scenario is: I'm six, and an invincible venusian army of robots
Last Line: #name?


MEOP: 2       
First Line: The fabled kansas flatness seems to go so far, we couldn't
Last Line: From the lunar dark side. Trebla. Relyks


MIKE-O, YOU'RE A CUTIE       
Last Line: Is brandishing a knife


MINUTE MYSTERIES       
First Line: Every crime is perfect here in centerville
Last Line: Every minute's a goddam mystery,' he grumbles


MISHIPASINGHAN, LUMCHIPAMUDANA, ETC    Poem Text    
First Line: Some days, anything is wonderful. In its
Subject(s): Food Habits; Potatoes


MISHIPASINGHAN, LUMCHIPAMUDANA, ETC       
First Line: Some days, anything is wonderful. In its
Last Line: He eats it. And there's only one word
Subject(s): Food Habits; Potatoes


MNEMONIC DEVICES       
First Line: The moon, that way of remembering
Last Line: Responsible for the names of the minions


MOONOLOGY       
First Line: The shock of a contemporary seeing st. Jerome
Last Line: A lake in a lake, a sky in a sky


MORE TROUBLE WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: ALTERNATIVE USES       
First Line: It will often be found useful to carry a bottle
Last Line: Hot kisses to my honey boy


MORE TROUBLE WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: DIRECTIONAL       
First Line: The level where the bits of frizzled-out satellites orbit
Last Line: Here, even this, smacks faintly of resurrection


MORE TROUBLE WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: DOG, FISH, SHOES (OR BEANS)       
First Line: I was a shmooshled little girl,' my aunt elena says
Last Line: So you see?' she'd add. 'nothing is hopeless.'


MORE TROUBLE WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: IN THE BAR IN THE BAR       
First Line: Someone's voice, made haughtier by her rum-on-ice
Last Line: Against the thick of the current - no, and no


MORE TROUBLE WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: SQUASH AND STONE       
First Line: And so it is, with the physicists' need
Last Line: As if it were a constitutional right. Give us our septon


MORE TROUBLE WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: SUBSTREAM       
First Line: The black lagoon is turbid - is an inky egg-drop soup
Last Line: They beat at their heads and tiamat rages


MORE TROUBLE WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: THE LOST CONTINENT (1951)       
First Line: The purse-snatch in this 1568 painting of bruegel's
Last Line: Eventually it was a continent


MORE TROUBLE WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: TRUE       
First Line: Speaking of which, I'd better stop here and admit
Last Line: Do not fear therefore. Love is our true north


MORE TROUBLE WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: TWO WEEKS, WITH POLO CHORUS       
First Line: She's upstairs assembling the lounga-recliner
Last Line: The term they use to measure electric current is resistance


MORE TROUBLE WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: VARIOUS ULIA       
First Line: Did we say it out loud? Eventually
Last Line: She needs to turn off the radio


MORE TROUBLE WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: WHAT WE'RE USED TO       
First Line: Or the woman who, after the seeped stink of her death
Last Line: I was supernatural


MORNING PAPER       
First Line: Greeting me in my ophthalmologist's waiting area is
Last Line: About the trees) are beyond the frame of our vision


MOUTH       
First Line: Of course they fight. Of course
Last Line: Everything follows from that


MULTIVERSE       
First Line: As a ship, in sinking, sucks whatever flotsam
Last Line: Into his labyrinth head, or her rosefoliate secrets


MUSICS AND VEGETABLES       
First Line: On a plstic dimestore 45 rpm I'd
Last Line: Song, to lushness, for lifting the roots into light


MYSTERIES       
First Line: There are levels to a place like this, on which
Last Line: Empty of its usual pile of hundred-dollar bills %although untampered-with and the lock still in plac


MYTH STUDIES       
First Line: The custodian erases whatever simple biology
Last Line: The blankness of fresh possibility


NATURAL HISTORY: 1       
First Line: As for the elephant, 'it is the largest of land animals'
Last Line: Under truth police surveillance. %- no


NATURAL HISTORY: 2       
First Line: The lake's an oolong brown today
Last Line: Howling it, and howling it


NATURAL HISTORY: 3       
First Line: Do you believe
Last Line: A not unthinkable proposition


NATURAL HISTORY: 4       
First Line: As to painters' verisimilitude, pliny tells us
Last Line: In their own late twentieth-century troubled american bed


NATURAL HISTORY: 5       
First Line: She's a mergers lawyer, remember
Last Line: Like any confused human beings


NATURAL STATE    Poem Text    
Subject(s): Books & Reading


NEED FOR PRIVATE SPACE IS HERE       
First Line: Enacted by max the collie repeatng a circle


NEOLOGISMS       
First Line: Outage is recent. 'northwest sector seventeen reports'


NEW GUIDELINES WILL AT LEAST SEND STUDENTS TO OUTSIDE SOURCES...       
First Line: I love its smell. And I hope you understand
Last Line: And what all of you stuck in your stupid dying lives %call the human condition
Subject(s): Automobiles; Love


NEWS IS HAPPENING       
Last Line: Peripheral vision


NIGGLING MYSTERY       
First Line: In my dream of newton, a great knock


NILE       
First Line: Elijah this. The children of israel that
Last Line: Our tongues on the other language


NILE IN AMERICA       
First Line: Stylized by its stiffening overnight, a squirrel
Last Line: He would rise in the light arms of morning


NITROGEN CYCLE       
First Line: That, sir, is a vile gossip, appropriate to, and
Last Line: The poor bagged up for ha'pence


NO LONGER RECOGNIZE ANY TIE BETWEEN US!       
Last Line: Splits the scene divisively is eloquent beyond


NOMENCLATURE       
First Line: Light's the way the zohar starts, that compendium of jewish
Last Line: They had one paper satchel of clothes, and their names


NOTE TO TYPESETTER: ADD MORE #?       
Last Line: Here in disconnected bytes


NOTES FROM THE DESKTOP       
First Line: Another poem where rachel phones in the thick of the night
Last Line: The galaxies fly from each other


NOW       
First Line: One day he left the headband in the truck
Last Line: Rained on hers, grief-lit and saline


NOW       
First Line: Cindy? Yes. No: not quite. He has never before
Last Line: Has to do; it's how he earns his salary


NOW HERE       
Last Line: Hey! You call that closure?' she said


NUMBERING AT BETHLEHEM       
First Line: He was, he tells his grandson, a grandson
Subject(s): Breughel The Elder, Pieter (1530-1569)


OF THE DISJUNCTIVE, I THINK OF MY GRANDPARENTS       
Last Line: An even more demeaning job: what


OF THE DOUBLENESS       
First Line: (ba-lam!) 'they're coming in from close to 12 o'clock!' (by
Last Line: Creature, who were two in the clear kyle everyday noon


OLD PHOTO       
First Line: They might be a theory: good cop, bad cop


ON A QUIET STREET       
First Line: Across the field, resolute as a rector, a stand
Last Line: I'd like to think it a benison


ON THE BEACH WITH THE VIKINGS       
First Line: He was known for his 'slow burn' shtick
Last Line: Of the king, as well as the funeral ship on fire %--in one


ON THE GRAVE       
First Line: This book. That book. I open
Last Line: A flute time plays an air on %then, the air itself


ONE CONTINUOUS SUBSTANCE       
First Line: A small boy and a slant of morning light
Last Line: And the sun %kept touching you, there, and there, where I'd been


ONE OF THEM SPEAKS       
First Line: You said they turned you into a column of light
Last Line: The way we think the dead do


ONE THING       
First Line: Now it seems a curious epoch in the history
Last Line: What I've come to him for -- the one thing


ONE WEEK BEFORE THE DIVORCE IS FINAL       
First Line: They start to laugh at something
Last Line: Not received at the farthermost outposts


OPPOSITION       
First Line: It's against that makes the music
Last Line: In this poem, flying on, in a draft of its own tune


OTHER WAY       
First Line: It rains, and everything changes
Last Line: And row our house into the morning


OWN RECOGNIZABLE       
First Line: They bound the foot -- they shriveled it like a salted persimmon
Last Line: I had a dream. We were two birds on one branch, singing


PACKING FOR A DIFFICULT TRIP       
First Line: I take my sci-fi paperback adventure
Last Line: Onto the flight to chicago


PAEAN TO THE CONCEPT       
First Line: On show tonight, the maestrochef in his puffpastry headgear


PANGAEA       
First Line: Not that they shae any etymological root
Last Line: Continents used to be a single mass under heaven


PAOLO UCCELLO       
First Line: It's not so much an argument is taking place - the argument becomes


PARALLEL       
First Line: That afternoon, my peripheral vision fills with a shetland pony
Last Line: #name?


PARNASSUS    Poem Text    
First Line: The gods always live on a mountain, and marble


PARNASSUS       
First Line: The gods always live on a mountain, and marble


PARTHENOGENESIS       
First Line: Out of waking, a day is made. We
Last Line: With a little embroidery %duck above the heartbeat


PASS IT ON: AN ESSAY       
First Line: And combrich gives, as an example, a coin
Last Line: Softer in our other face, our face in sleep, %our obverse


PAST PRESIDENTS OF THE COUNTERS CLUB       
First Line: Archimedes the geometer claimed that he could calculate
Last Line: For half a century


PATIENTS, BLIND FROM BIRTH       
Last Line: And twinkle on the milky way


PATOOT AND POOPIK       
First Line: Weal' is a good word, and especially wedded tight
Last Line: You don't understand a single word I'm saying'


PAYMENT PLAN       
First Line: Clunker. Junker. The fizzlemobile. Everybody
Last Line: And coaxing juice enough for the uphills
Subject(s): Automobiles; Freedom; Money


PEOPLE ARE DROPPING OUT OF OUR LIVES       
First Line: Joplin's voice, edged like a crack
Subject(s): Joplin, Janis (1943-1970); Music, Rock; Rock & Roll


PEOPLE ARE DROPPING OUT OF OUR LIVES       
First Line: Joplin's voice, edged like a crack
Last Line: Go higher, the hands go %capo up my neck
Subject(s): Joplin, Janis (1943-1970); Music, Rock


PERHAPS BECAUSE HER SKIRTS SO OFTEN GUSTED UP       
Last Line: For instance, this recep


PERSISTENCE       
First Line: The gut-knots in the traffic-knots in the freeway-knots
Last Line: She leans an ear against one unbroken string %of her long-gone music


PERSONAL       
First Line: A rorschach 'has' meaning. It's something like a rorschach
Last Line: I'm not sure I believe tht now


PETE'S YAHOO NEIGHBOR       
First Line: The brains they sponged off the livingroom ...


PHOTO OF A LOVER FROM MY JUNIOR YEAR IN COLLEGE       
First Line: Or the earth: one half in sun
Last Line: She has one of her arms in an arm of her blouse, %and the other one wonderfully not
Subject(s): Memory; Photography And Photographers; Universities & Colleges


PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE INTERIORS OF DICTATORS' HOUSES    Poem Text    
First Line: It's as if every demon from hell with aspirations
Subject(s): Desire


PHYLACTERIES       
First Line: Someone once told my friend jessie smile
Last Line: Said it too. I thought how, in this foreign land, it would do


PING PONG BALLS ARE ATOMS       
First Line: The women's community outreach lunch
Last Line: To melt back into the nutritive camaraderie of the losers


PLEASURE OF THE LYRIC POEM       
First Line: If the byzantine/ the ottoman/ the roman
Last Line: Recounted in prose, the empire wins or loses %another vastly important battle


PLEASURES    Poem Text    
First Line: The view from the dungeon's barred slit
Subject(s): Pleasure


POEM BEGINNING WITH A QUOTE FROM...GALACTIC ODYSSEY...       
First Line: And on a world that circles ultima three are beings
Last Line: Though their customs differ and their gods bear different names


POEM BEGINNING WITH THREE LINES BY DR. SEUSS       
First Line: And how fortunate you're not professor de breeze
Last Line: And he picks up his pointer, and turns to his ducks


POEM OF THE PRAISES       
First Line: My name isn't lucius; I never grew up


POEM SPOKEN BY A PLAGUE AT SCENIC VIEW       
First Line: This one, here, that looks like a melted accordion
Last Line: At the shock. You didn't know %you had it in you


POEM WHOSE LAST SENTENCE IS 17 SYLLABLES AFTER A SUGGESTION    Poem Text    
First Line: The little we need. Thoreau demoted flour in favor of lowlier
Subject(s): Thoreau, Henry David (1817-1862); O'keeffe, Georgia (1887-1986); Basic Needs


POEM WHOSE LAST SENTENCE IS 17 SYLLABLES AFTER A SUGGESTION       
First Line: The little we need. Thoreau demoted flour in favor of lowlier


POEM WITH TWO LINES FROM A CATALOGUE       
First Line: There is no color inside the body


POEMS SPOKEN BY A PLAQUE AT SCENIC VIEW       
First Line: This one, here, that looks like a melted accordion
Last Line: At the shock. You didn't know %you had it in you
Subject(s): Nature


POET SPEAKS OBSERVER SPOUTS        Recitation by Author


POET-SPOUSE OBSERVER-THOUGHTS       
First Line: The saddest face I've ever seen-I mean
Last Line: Run off with the undertaker


POLARIZED RESPONSES       
First Line: Of course the gods are alive!...They're gods
Last Line: Swaying to the music


POWER OF WEIRDNESS       
First Line: It was clear that night in 1887, in the barn
Last Line: Means it's from another world


POWERS       
First Line: Whizzer, the top, phantasmo...They come back sometimes
Last Line: He said it clearly, to her and to everyone, %spent, and heroic


PREDICTOPOEM       
First Line: It wasn't the same for me either. In


PREPARATIONS FOR TRAVEL       
First Line: That tasty paste they make
Last Line: The two words for following sun %flowers. Shadows


PREPOSITIONS    Poem Text    
First Line: We are going - the motion picture theater, (direction)
Subject(s): Parents; Cancer (disease); Home Health Care; Parenthood


PREPOSITIONS       
First Line: We are going -- the moving picture theater. (direction)
Last Line: Filled the blankness that we come from and we go to


PRIVATE LIFE       
First Line: He owed dormady's for the paint job on the pickup
Last Line: That had once been her mother's and now was hers


PROBLEM SOLVING    Poem Text    
First Line: From a knoll above the arno he watches its muscular washes work
Subject(s): Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519); Arno River, Italy; Brothers & Sisters


PROBLEM SOLVING       
First Line: From a knoll above the arno he watches its muscular washes work


PROTECTION 'S       
First Line: What we called it, and that latex circle marked our wallet-leather
Last Line: Know what they hadn't paid. It's a racket


PROTEIN       
First Line: That year I dated ellen I also met her roommate
Last Line: With doorposts of whey curds, aged cheese, pillars of pork %-in some ways, everybody's dream
Subject(s): Relationships


PUBLIC LIFE       
First Line: Their people believe 'the shimmeringness'--the spirit
Last Line: And those poppyseed cakes laced in honey


PULLING JUST A LITTLE SNOCKERED       
Last Line: A nondescript and strangely silent sedan


QEBEHSENEUF       
First Line: I want this poem to be that black
Last Line: And it wheels right back where it came from
Subject(s): Murder


QUEST FOR THE SOURCE OF THE NILE       
First Line: They needed to know. They came, they suffered
Last Line: He was screaming. 'tell me the names of the gods!'


RAISINGS       
First Line: There were even moments amid the emotional wreckage
Last Line: Exactly where he's pointed


RAMSES THE SECOND       
First Line: The week that tonya's marriage fell apart
Last Line: The air three feet away waves like medusa's friggin' scalp.'
Subject(s): Change; Pain


RAREFIED       
First Line: Fancy-schmancy,' my father would have said
Last Line: He'd give you the cheap shirt off his back


RAREFIED; THE SWEATER IS MADE FROM ONLY THE FINEST SOFTEST UNDERHAIRS    Poem Text    
First Line: Fancy-schmancy my father would have said
Subject(s): Introspection; Laborers - Taiwan; Sweatshops; Sweating System


READING IN       
First Line: And then I said the bus's wheels in fresh


REAL SPEECHES       
First Line: Applying for the mortgage loan is inimical
Last Line: Near the drive-thru lane, abidingly somewhere inside


REAL WAR       
First Line: You overboiled chucklump of soupmeat' - good


REALITY ORGANIZATION       
First Line: 4:30 a.M. With the woe adding up
Last Line: A hardness to hold to, a firm true specific event.


REALITY ORGANIZATION: 2       
First Line: Zen and the art of computer management systems.
Last Line: Had lysistrata. We have biofeedback and we have lysistrata.


REALITY ORGANIZATION: 3       
First Line: We have biofeedback. We know there are levels
Last Line: The first worked stones are scored.


REALITY ORGANIZATION: 4       
First Line: It was nearly dawn when I found you. By then
Last Line: Electronwise, wholegalaxyclusterwise, and not be wiser.


RECEPTIONIST AT THE DAILY POST, ORIGINATING PAPER       
Last Line: In the midst of human chaos that would otherwise


RECIPE       
First Line: Greatgrandma's bending to pluck some vegetable
Last Line: That tastes of these roots


RED SHIFT       
First Line: He loved not fish, john aubrey writes
Last Line: Of cod and herring is in him


REEL ESTATE    Poem Text    
First Line: Sleep - sleep - then the kitchen trap
Subject(s): Conduct Of Life


REENTRY       
First Line: By the beehived dolls and slickum'd ducks-assed dudes
Last Line: Out into the difficult dance of the world: the now, the here %the passing


REENTRY       
First Line: By the beehived dolls and slickum'd ducks-assed dudes
Last Line: Out into the difference dance of the world: the now, the here, the passing


REFINEMENT       
First Line: We loathe the rat. At any time
Last Line: Disappearing; and then disappearing: completely, %into the thin and bright aristotelian air


REFUGE       
First Line: Doesn't need to be a physical place or even %of this world
Last Line: I see him %softly start to speak. And then, %like any deer, it bolts for cover


RELIQUARY       
First Line: Is silver lilted sibilantly around an enameled urn about the size of an old-tim
Last Line: And, his hand on her knee, she closes the book


REMAINS SONG       
First Line: The penis is gone, the penis of even tyrannosaurus rex
Last Line: God were a boy-toy neighbor she'd decided to run off with


REMBRANDT / PANTIES       
First Line: A couple is having a vitriolic lulu
Last Line: To the power of x, and delicate under the slow turn %of the equally unreadable stars


REMBRANDT/PANTIES       
First Line: A couple if having a vitriolic lulu
Last Line: To the power of x and delicate under the slow turn %of the equally unreadable stars
Subject(s): Marriage; Rembrandt Harmensz Van Riij (1606-1669); Self-criticism


REPAIRWORK       
First Line: The whang! Of their anger back-and-forth
Last Line: Into endless sky-blue cloth


REPEATED SIGHTINGS       
First Line: Of the rock star we thought buried in his diamondwear
Last Line: That bird? - you can open the norton anthology where %it's reported flown, lines earlier, into someb


REPOSITORIES       
First Line: A terrible thing, my mother said, then shushed her mouth
Last Line: Misplaced faith. A terrible thing


RETURN TO THE WORLD       
First Line: There's darkness; then there's an opalescent web
Last Line: The nova and ovary, yes are sisters. %the lungs are small bundles of sky
Subject(s): Night


ROCK       
First Line: Stars. Sheen was fifteen when she started
Last Line: Its center. 'and the rays?' when I'm not me, they're me


ROLLING CLOSER OVER THE LUNAR SURFACE       
Last Line: In their radiant and eco-holistic grandeur


ROSES AND SKULLS       
First Line: Jee-zuss, I just got a call from the crazy old bitch
Last Line: In your hands at midnight isn't enough. Now holding this oth e face


ROUTE       
First Line: Five a.M., and headlight-eating clots of fog
Last Line: And mad science enough for me


S.D.G.I.E.       
First Line: My friend was describing the argument. He said
Last Line: They might think five feet made a difference


SAGA OF STUPIDITY AND WONDER       
First Line: The history of the world could be written
Last Line: They were his constant weather: the air was 8,000 wings


SAN ANTONIO, TX: THE HAPPY JAZZ BAND VERSUS VERSUS       
First Line: He is born in the uterus
Last Line: Alligator pear %blood orange


SANGUINARY: 1. MICHAEL'S       
First Line: With his white cap and its perfect chain
Last Line: With his work, with his apron of blood on


SANGUINARY: 2. PRESSED FLOWERS       
First Line: There came a time when understanding was taught
Last Line: A touch of breeze in its branches


SANGUINARY: 3. WHAT A GIRAFFE EATS       
First Line: High leaves
Last Line: Stretched out %over generations


SANGUINARY: 4. WHAT A TRIBAL UNIT IS       
First Line: We don't know
Last Line: Washing the knife off now %somebody's father


SANGUINARY: 5. DEFINE A SATELLITE       
First Line: On some nights I go for a walk and the moon
Last Line: All of the other bodies


SCAFFOLDING COLLAPSES; AND ANOTHER WEEK       
Last Line: She escapes. Of course-her weekly escapes


SCANT       
First Line: ...And even from the closest-that would be
Last Line: For forty-seven years, and then he wakes, and she begins dying


SCAR/BEER/GLASSES    Poem Text    
First Line: They only have an hour: they have to


SCENES FROM THE NEXT LIFE       
First Line: This is the way I served the pharaoh, god of the two lands
Last Line: I know the quieter joy of its blueprint


SCHUL       
First Line: These are the holy scrolls
Last Line: Into them, like white light


SCIENCES SING A LULLABYE       
First Line: Physics says: go to sleep. Of course
Last Line: History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down


SECOND LEVEL       
First Line: Jose oliveira, a human, was the voice of jose garcia


SECOND THOUGHTS       
First Line: ... And then of course the weeping: some demurely, some
Last Line: That's sunlit at times %and at other times darkened
Subject(s): Reason; Thought


SEEING    Poem Text    
First Line: If it was water, poseidon presided
Subject(s): Coryate, Thomas (1577-1617); Travel; Journeys; Trips


SENSITIVITY       
First Line: When my father died a time-zone away


SENTIMENTAL    Poem Text    
First Line: The light has traveled unthinkable thousands of miles to be


SENTIMENTAL       
First Line: The light has traveled unthinkable thousands of miles to be
Last Line: All these years now, every last one of my childhood's %heartwormed puppydogs found its natural voice


SEQUEL TO THE SONNET FOR PLANET 10       
First Line: This three-inch glazed ceramic shoe
Last Line: It's once again a living vein in the planet
Variant Title(s): A Kind Of Etiolog


SERIEMA SONG       
First Line: The flamingo delouses its belly with the easy speed
Last Line: It's night, its velvet covering us again %and that bird
Subject(s): Love


SERIEMA SONG       
First Line: The flamingo delouses its belly with the easy speed
Last Line: It's night, its velvet covering us again %and that bird.


SESTINA: AS THERE ARE SUPPORT GROUPS, THERE ARE SUPPORT WORDS    Poem Text    
First Line: When visiting a distant (and imponderable) shire,
Subject(s): Language; Words; Vocabulary


SESTINA: AS THERE ARE SUPPORT GROUPS, THERE ARE SUPPORT WORDS       
First Line: When visiting a distant (and imponderable) shire
Last Line: Of the hygrometer promises oxidation of iron


SHANGRI-LA       
First Line: People were missing
Last Line: For the last time in history


SHAWABTY, USHABI, OR SHABTI FIGURES       
First Line: Some are lumpish terra-cotta cylinders


SHAWL    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: Eight hours by bus, and night
Subject(s): Books & Reading


SHOYN FERGESSIN: 'I'VE FORGOTTEN' IN YIDDISH       
First Line: But now it's the yiddish itself I'm forgetting
Subject(s): Forgetfulness; Loss; Moving & Movers; Refugees; United States - Immigration & Emigtration; Yiddish


SHOYN FERGESSIN: 'I'VE FORGOTTEN' IN YIDDISH       
First Line: But now it's the yiddish itself I'm forgetting
Last Line: Anything for a minute. So that's what I said. They asked me %my name and I said I've forgotten
Subject(s): Forgetfulness; Loss; Moving And Movers; Refugees; U.s. - Immigration And Emigration; Yiddish


SILL RITUAL: A SURVEY       
First Line: Cilley had died... Mary had rejected him
Last Line: In the midst of people -- and (you will smile) I never read them %without first washing my hands


SINGSONG, WHATEVER IT MEANS       
First Line: Invisible %at first, they suddenly tilt


SITTING IN THE MARGIN    Poem Text    
First Line: A nun puckers. Her class, as if together
Subject(s): Catholic Schools


SIXTEENTH CENTURY, BRUSH AND INK: A HERMIT ON A RIVERBANK       
First Line: Is virtually all riverbank: the water is a great
Last Line: - sometimes we'll hurt each other just to remember %we haven't been dissolved into it yet


SLIGHTLY SHUFFLED HISTORY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION       
First Line: That night the snow fell as if prototype gears
Last Line: And the polar caps, and the oystershell moons


SNAPPED       
First Line: Careful,' a woman unpacking a picnic basket formulaically
Last Line: Out of the underbrush, chasing lois across the amazing hills


SO MUCH LIKE A RENAISSANCE FIGURE OF DEATH       
Last Line: Already he's a million atoms, furiously ticking


SO WOULD RATHER DO THIS EVEN THAN DRINK       
Last Line: She never missed a beat


SOME CLOTHS       
First Line: The color wrung out of a wrung-out cloth, a flock of city pigeons on the roof
Last Line: Which rises now, a prayer shawl in the air, a wedding canopy


SOME COMMON TERMS IN LATIN THAT ARE LARGER THAN OUR LIVES    Poem Text    
First Line: Mutant-engineered bloodsucker djinns, invisibility rays
Subject(s): World Trade Center Tragedy (9/11/2001); New York City - Terrorist Attack, 9/11


SOME COMMON TERMS IN LATIN THAT ARE LARGER THAN OUR LIVES       
First Line: Mutant-engineered bloodsucker djinns, invisibility rays
Last Line: And what's beyond the sky, and beyond that, ad infinitum
Subject(s): World Trade Center Tragedy (9/11/2001)


SOME DEATHS THAT HAVE RECENTLY COME TO MY ATTENTION       
First Line: Premature and only nineteen ounces, sonny
Last Line: And, just as it does, the whole %universe slips away


SOME DOORS: 1       
First Line: The refrigerator door was hyperspace thick
Last Line: Reached through that slick ruby slit, to the wrist. %a thousand miles. Gelid, swampy guts and the cr


SOME DOORS: 2       
First Line: A folklore joke goes: what door
Last Line: A temptress beckons me sexily; she's leaning on a door %thathas my name engraved, and a date, and a


SOME DOORS: 3       
First Line: In 6th grade biology one film speeded time
Last Line: It wasn't the size but exactly the shape %of a door to another world


SOME LEAVES FROM THE PERMISSION TREE       
First Line: He drilled a hole in her head
Last Line: In the air said: what a crazy whirled


SOME OBSERVATIONS       
First Line: How many potential separate tears, locked into the body of lot's wife?
Last Line: Their earthly salutations'


SOME SECRET       
First Line: I'm looking at a painting of what's seemingly a 1950s classroom
Last Line: Alive and dying and bursting again in its eyes like the stars


SOME THINGS       
First Line: I'm tired of writing about the gods
Last Line: The rising place for the dough


SONG OF THE TAGS       
First Line: Yesterday morning, root canal. That night
Last Line: And so-for a while-we understood it


SONG OF TOO MUCH       
First Line: A polo zealot, akbar, 'the greatest
Last Line: And I follow its light down the field


SONG: DOUBT AND LIMITATION       
First Line: One of those days: the sky weighs
Last Line: Of what I know and what I think I know


SONNET FOR PLANET 10       
First Line: My mother is dying. Nothing
Last Line: But I'm weary, and I'm leaving it undone


SOURCE OF CUTTLEBONE       
First Line: By now the canary's pocked this circle of bone to something
Last Line: Having come, it seemed, out of nowhere


SPACES    Poem Text    
First Line: Beneath the dome that afternoon, she studies reproductions
Subject(s): Paintings & Painters


SPACES       
First Line: Beneath the dome that afternoon, she studies
Last Line: The death of that dream, then another dream, and %another


SPIES (SPIES? SPIES.)    Poem Text    
First Line: Are everywhere. / they float
Subject(s): Spies


SPIES (SPIES? SPIES.)       
First Line: Are everywhere. %they float
Last Line: Lonely version of love, I think. The air %goes cloudy ... I fell his gaze ... %who does he report to
Subject(s): Spies


SPLINTER GROUPS OF BREAKFAST       
First Line: Not even nothing existed yet
Last Line: They touch, they stroke, and the universe %recalibrates itself; coheres


SPRING NIGHTS       
First Line: Screwing is a major problem-eric manages
Last Line: Cold light,' the scientist calls it


SQUARE EGGS       
Last Line: A side of flounder


STATIONED    Poem Text    
First Line: It's the other ones, who soon enough return
Subject(s): Mourning; Bereavement


STEEPLEJACKS       
First Line: Searching out her husband's grave
Last Line: Construction workers up in the beams


STEERAGE    Poem Text    
First Line: By now, the sachel's leather has reclaimed its living redolence
Subject(s): Grandparents; Immigrants; Grandmothers; Grandfathers; Great Grandfathers; Great Grandmothers; Emigrant; Emigration; Immigration


STEERAGE       
First Line: By now, the satchel's leather has reclaimed its living redolence
Last Line: Have heard a music that's not of this world


STEPHEN HAWKING, WALKING       
First Line: I rolled myself down to the thames
Subject(s): Hawking, Stephen (b. 1942)


STEPHEN HAWKING, WALKING       
First Line: I rolled myself down to the thames
Last Line: In the molecules inside my head %I've thought it completely in numbers
Subject(s): Hawking, Stephen (b. 1942)


STILL LIFE       
First Line: In vesalius, the figures -- the corpses -- are presented in front of
Last Line: Out of herself, on the wall above the basket of radish and chives


STILL LIFE, SYMBOLIC OF LINES       
First Line: It's aesthetically lovely, but pangs the mind
Last Line: A still life, symbolic of lines; of lines and their erasure


STOMACKES    Poem Text    
First Line: Yes. So we must reconnect
Subject(s): Food & Eating; Puritans


STONEHENGE    Poem Text    
First Line: Each morning he'd anoint the room's four corners
Subject(s): Insanity; Madness; Mental Illness


STONEHENGE       
First Line: Each morning he'd anoint the room's four corners
Last Line: A pyramid roof, and a real smoking chimney
Subject(s): Insanity


STOP ME IF YOU'VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE       
First Line: She's scratching her name on a weathered block of rose-granite
Last Line: Into the wind that scours the stones of ancient and modern egypt


STORY OF DORSETT       
First Line: It's 1912. A man, or really a youth - he's just eighteen
Last Line: 4 a.M. He mumbles one more oy, then knocks. The woman %who'sgoing to be my grandmother opens the clu


STREET TALK COMING MORE EASILY       
Last Line: Botched it. When I was five or six


SUBSTANCE       
First Line: ... But the buddha of the todaiji temple is 452 tons
Last Line: The angel departing from the family of tobit. Already %it's flown half out of the etching. You can't


SUITCASE SONG    Poem Text    
First Line: John=o was given a key to the apartment. The deal
Subject(s): Death; Dead, The


SUMERIAN VOTIVE FIGURINES       
First Line: Were meant to pray, unceasingly, on their owners' behalfs
Last Line: Okay the, pray for my people, he tells them


SUMERIAN VOTIVE GIGURINES WERE MEANT TO PRAY       
Last Line: Okay then, pray for my people, he tells them


SUNG GRIEVOUSLY       
First Line: My back gives out and the thrown bolt tears through nerve
Last Line: The eyes and makes the back sing grievously


SURVIVAL    Poem Text    
First Line: This is the church of giraffes
Subject(s): Love; Death - Animals


SWAN    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: Not just as individuals, but also as a couple, they
Subject(s): Singing & Singers; Songs


SWAN       
First Line: Not just as individuals, but also as a couple, they
Last Line: By the singing that it was on the verge of burning out'


SYMPATHETIC MAGIC    Poem Text    
First Line: At the loading docks, in implacable light, the potato farmers
Subject(s): Sight


TALE OF PIETY       
First Line: Quoting grandma: the hassidim say in the days of his splendour
Last Line: The humus was thick, and rich, and every blossom a trumpet


TALK SHOW       
First Line: A woman heard angels. The paper says angels
Last Line: On earth as it is in heaven
Subject(s): Popular Culture - United States


TARPAN AND AUROCHS       
First Line: Eventually, you'll be called. It will be


TARPAN AND AUROCHS       
First Line: Eventually you'll be called. It will be
Last Line: The tarpan and aurochs, name them, know them eye to eye.


TEE-HEES / THE CALL TO THE ARK       
First Line: A guy named joe who had acne and then the hardbit
Last Line: -and, left behind, drowning in envy and not %understanding, we tittered, we laughed up a storm


THAT AFTERNOON HE COULDN'T STOP SHAKING       
Last Line: And straight lines weren't important


THAT FOR ALL OF THEIR TOMMY-GUN ACK-ACK-ACK       
Last Line: Togedder fordy years?'


THAT GAP    Poem Text    
First Line: Spiders of light, spirals of light, and claws


THAT HE'D MADE IT UP. HE SAID IT       
Last Line: A look. One lifted the bottle


THAT SHAPE       
First Line: The lining of the lung is involute, it rills
Last Line: She was once this young


THAWED       
First Line: On the hottest day for its date in the city's history, I fall asleep
Last Line: So fierce, so otherworldly, it heals


THE AMOUNTS    Poem Text    
First Line: As if there weren't enough. As if the 4,000 shoes


THE AURA    Poem Text    
First Line: What we are and why we;re here
Subject(s): Mankind; Human Race


THE BITTERSWEET COMFORT OF MOTLEY DETAIL    Poem Text    
First Line: In an open field, flat and clear for miles


THE BURDEN OF MODERNITY': THE BOOK, THE GOD, THE CHILD       
First Line: United airlines check-in: and the line is arranged
Subject(s): Books; Children; God; Reading; Childhood


THE COUNTERFEIT EARTH!    Poem Text    
First Line: It's 2157. Two adventuring spacemen rocketing home
Subject(s): Popular Culture - United States


THE GOLD STAR    Poem Text    
First Line: Elaine's job on the geriatric ward included encouraging
Subject(s): Mothers; Nursing Homes; Old Age; Old Age Homes; Assisted Living


THE INVISIBLE WORLD    Poem Text    
First Line: This might explain ghosts, or esp: the stuff of us is worth more
Subject(s): Human Body


THE LOCUST SONG    Poem Text    
First Line: The tyranny of poets: like. O we were like


THE MORE MODEST THE DEFINITION OF HEAVEN, THE OFTENER WE'RE THERE    Poem Text    
First Line: Years later they let him go. New evidence
Subject(s): Contentment


THE MULTIVERSE    Poem Text    
First Line: As a ship, in sinking, sucks whatever flotsam
Subject(s): Space & Space Travel; Outer Space; Fourth Dimension


THE NUMBERING AT BETHLEHEM    Poem Text    
First Line: He was, he tells his grandson, a grandson
Subject(s): Breughel The Elder, Pieter (1530-1569); Brueghel The Elder, Pieter; Bruegel The Elder, Pieter


THE POEM OF THE LITTLE HOUSE AT THE CORNER OF MISAPPREHENSION AND MARVEL    Poem Text    
Subject(s): Language; Words; Vocabulary


THE QUEST FOR THE SOURCE OF THE NILE    Poem Text    
First Line: They needed to know. They came, they suffered
Subject(s): Nile (river); Speke, John Hanning (1827-1864); Pain; Africa; Suffering; Misery


THE SCIENCES SING A LULLABY    Poem Text    
First Line: Physics says: go to sleep. Of course
Subject(s): Science; Scientists


THE TALK SHOW    Poem Text    
First Line: A woman heard angels. The paper says angels
Subject(s): Popular Culture - United States


THE TITLE FOR A COLLECTION OF POEMS APPEARS FROM OUT OF NOWHERE    Poem Text    
First Line: The truth is, the world is flat


THE TOO LATE POEM    Poem Text    
First Line: Nothing in the room can go back
Subject(s): Progress


THE WAY THE NOVEL FUNCTIONS    Poem Text    
First Line: In the s-f story you read, then dream a person


THE WELL    Poem Text    
First Line: One hundred peaceable kingdoms, and in all of them
Subject(s): Hicks, Edward (1780-1849); Paintings & Painters


THE WORLD OF EXPECTATIONS    Poem Text    
First Line: What starts with f and ends with u-c-c? Starts
Subject(s): Sex


THE YOKING OF THE TWO MODES    Poem Text    
First Line: Unto us is given a billboard, its spaghetti the size


THEORY OF ABSOLUTE FORMS       
First Line: It isn't easy to picture an infinite universe


THEORY OF WIND       
First Line: This is how the page must feel: it doesn't


THERE       
First Line: Back then I lived in the future: jazzing
Last Line: Mail spaceship in the distance. It's so lovely %here: green woods, and fields


THERMODYNAMICS/SUMER       
First Line: Heave-and-buckle, the furnace warbles its heat up
Last Line: At least, %I'll be losing your warmth to that other world


THESE LIKENESSES    Poem Text    
First Line: All over this city, dirty red boxes on dark poles


THIS AND THAT       
First Line: And then, you say, I whimpered in my sleep
Last Line: All night, walking the dolphin, stroking it, talking it, %not letting it go under


THIS CARTOGRAPHY       
First Line: I fell, I bled: it wasn't bad, just red
Last Line: Exploded into existence in that bony dome


THIS NEEDLE'S TIP       
First Line: That we would call infinitesimal, is
Last Line: With a patient and unaccountable goodness


THOREAU/WHO DIRECTED LE BOUCHER/& POPE    Poem Text    
First Line: Hiram?/walter unh huh. You scurvy
Subject(s): Communications


THOUSAND EYES IN THE DARKNESS       
First Line: The girl is three; the boy, two. In the window
Last Line: Tears to a thousand eyes in the darkness %and not just, now,these two


THREAD THROUGH HISTORY    Poem Text    
First Line: What is it, what really is it, this sacred or secular
Subject(s): History; Human Conduct; Historians


THREAD THROUGH HISTORY       
First Line: What is it, what really is it, this sacred or secular
Last Line: I'll know what to do with them


THREE DEGREES OF IT       
First Line: We're all arrived from off-planet
Last Line: He controls the entire room with his tongue


THREE OR FOUR STORIES THAT DO OR DON'T TOUCH       
First Line: I love you.' in response: 'I love you'
Last Line: How easily they were everyone


THUMB AND TOE       
First Line: We need a life, an individual life
Last Line: The sacrifices we all have, and the alters


TIP       
First Line: It's so dark now
Last Line: And colder than ours. Yes he's death's, he's %eternity's, one-tenth


TITLE FOR A COLLECTION OF POEMS APPEARS ...       
First Line: The truth is, the world is flat
Last Line: At least we'd know the truth. %the truth, and other lies


TO BE READ IN 500 YEARS    Poem Text    


TO READ THE WORLD       
First Line: We'll hitch up the mayor to the cart
Last Line: Confined (you vote for which of thee?)


TO SEPARATE       
First Line: There's a bantamweight brawler we all pigheadedly bet
Last Line: Provided for us to be otherwise - mortal, and lost, %and created in halfness
Subject(s): Absence


TO WHERE       
First Line: It's a key all right, the 7th on my ring by my
Last Line: Extinction eased out of its natural turning


TOAST       
First Line: I find one on the riverbank, as light first rises


TOO LATE POEM       
First Line: Nothing in the room can go back
Last Line: The fate that had already happened


TOO MUCH       
First Line: A friend says inevitably when circumstances tickles his wonderment bone


TOO MUCH USE       
First Line: Eat mexican-an advertising pencil from madre elena's
Last Line: Mad mother showed up with the first don't sharpened off?


TORTES       
First Line: Everybody knows there's something for which he deserves his
Last Line: Do you hear! For a moment, he really does believe that's %why they knock at his door, the stupid jew


TOTEM       
First Line: We call it 'empty air' but
Last Line: Then mate. Its path is printed into randomness itself. %now it's here; now it's vanished


TOWARD CONGRUENCY       
First Line: Betweeness %the cat's the horse's
Last Line: Again in the home of what it means %to be human
Subject(s): Love


TRAILS OF FIRE AND SPIRITS       
First Line: In his comic books' chimeric air, a doorslam
Last Line: Through trails of damaging fire and spirit bringers


TRANSPLANTING: 1. SWEET WILLIAM       
First Line: Hours pass
Last Line: That fact her computer ('omniscia,' as she calls it) %could never download for her


TRANSPLANTING: 2. SLOW SCROLL       
First Line: Broughams, barouches, curricles
Last Line: We and keats will always know in common
Subject(s): Computers


TRANSPLANTING: 3. THE INTERMARRIAGE       
First Line: Midnight. Jessie
Last Line: Along with it, as completely %as if in suttee
Subject(s): Marriage


TRANSPLANTING: 4. HOT LINKS       
First Line: And at 36, ada, countess of levelace, will die
Last Line: Savior of her husband, this sweet william
Subject(s): Computers; Evolution


TRAVEL NOTES: FINISH       
First Line: On 27 february 1014, shortly after midday
Last Line: With her awkward, glossy finish


TRAVEL NOTES: INTRODUCTORY SECTION       
First Line: This sad first line presents somebody
Last Line: In the ripening weight of experience


TRAVEL NOTES: INTRODUCTORY SECTION: 1       
First Line: A new day's march, the tins of biscuit gone
Last Line: Comfort must not be expected by folks that go a pleasuring.'


TRAVEL NOTES: INTRODUCTORY SECTION: 2       
First Line: When his eyes can focus, my brother-in-law is lost
Last Line: The face can be an odometer


TRAVEL NOTES: INTRODUCTORY SECTION: 3       
First Line: And he will describe for you these numerous wonders
Last Line: Goin nowhere %fast


TROUBLE, WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: 'OF COURSE THEY'RE STRANGERS ...'       
First Line: I'll tell you about 'the major' three doors south of here
Last Line: And vultures will prick my bones clean!'


TROUBLE, WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: AGAINST       
First Line: In the medieval village, 'decisions respecting plowing
Last Line: And smack their silly heads against the trees
Subject(s): Farm Life


TROUBLE, WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: ANCESTORED-BACK ...       
First Line: If only somebody would drill with a finger-long rig down
Last Line: Emphatic we can be. How long they've been at it


TROUBLE, WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: COMPLETE WITH STARRY NIGHT ...       
First Line: Morgan's father will be mailed to her
Last Line: I'm lifting a beer %for bob potts


TROUBLE, WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: IMPS       
First Line: Fire isn't allowed, for the sake of the books
Last Line: That he was being hunted like prey by hounds from the moon


TROUBLE, WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: IN       
First Line: The text: %& then the author's
Last Line: Ray that he's discovered, this mystery force, this x


TROUBLE, WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: THE NUMBER OF UTTERLY ALIEN ...       
First Line: He likes to be touched - it must be
Last Line: It's all a billion planets


TROUBLE, WITH PLEASANT INTERLUDES: THERE, TOO       
First Line: I'm not the dapper man in the lambswool overcoat
Last Line: And I'm there, too


TRY AS HE MIGHT, HIS POEM REENACTS THE PLAY OF SOMEONE       
First Line: Kah-bam! A florid, orangey dinosaur
Last Line: We learn to call living


TWO DOMAINS       
First Line: A heavy, violent sky
Last Line: And so it goes - the great length of what we know, %into what we don't know


TWO PARTS OF THE DAY ARE,       
First Line: First: I'm driving home when boomer cuts me off
Last Line: At whatever of this world might read me
Subject(s): Love


TYPICAL PRUDENCE OF LINE AND ABSTEMIOUS SHADING       
Last Line: Of his ray, zam! Your memory, mysteriously kaput


U       
First Line: The convoluted brain-gray paint is haze, on paint


UNDERGRAIN/MY FATHER       
First Line: This is what the ancient egyptian artists knew, who
Last Line: Alive, air alive with its promise


UNITS    Poem Text    
First Line: This is the pain you could fit in a tea ball.
Subject(s): Illness


UNTITLED       
First Line: - it was, in its way %a pieta
Last Line: Cradles in the milkiest arms of the universe


US/CLAUDIA/TALLEYRAND       
First Line: The hyperreactive yammer of the neighbor's car alarm
Last Line: The droppings of those few june birds


VACATION: CALIFORNIA COAST    Poem Text    
First Line: Maybe it's because we're all born into this world
Last Line: Splitting, and wedding, and breaking, and healing
Subject(s): Divorce; Healing; Seashore; Water; Cures; Beach; Coast; Shore


VESSELS       
First Line: In caracas, venezuela, in 1800, one can listen
Last Line: And the air in her wake is electric


VESTIGIAL    Poem Text    
First Line: Yes: that fingery faction of a rabbit's commodious


VESTIGIAL       
First Line: Yes: that fingery fraction of a rabbit's commodious


VESTIGIAL: APPENDIX, COCCYX, PINEAL EYE       
First Line: Yes: that fingery fraction of a rabbit's commodious
Last Line: A pair of muscley nubbins itching the living flesh.


VESTIGIAL: BIG BANG       
First Line: Ooohing over stonehenge-over skew-silhouetted
Last Line: Wings, no. More like the fossils of wings.


VESTIGIAL: THE ADVENTURES OF JOHN DEE       
First Line: Not that an omelet of ostrich eggs intensifies
Last Line: Trace of a time when stature matched faith and accomplishment.


VIGIL    Poem Text    
First Line: A flower/then the flower
Subject(s): Mothers; Illness; Flowers


VIGIL       
First Line: A flowers. Then the flower


VOCABULARY       
First Line: When was the last time something ensued
Last Line: Wouldn't the kindling be enough wouldn't any single %twig of this world recite all of our names
Subject(s): Language; Reason; Rhyme


VOICES: 1. PAGED       
First Line: The dead will speak through anything
Last Line: Pass by a stone and the summer air is %humming around it. You're being paged


VOICES: 2. NUTS       
First Line: Not this one, this junk...This one!'
Last Line: Figuring out the details on the other side %of the greatest darkness. 'some pen collectors are reall


VOICES: 3. GHOST-MOUTH-HOME       
First Line: The bowls are scored in a ritual design
Last Line: Into their poetry-writing class the teacher %back from the city started this year


VOICES: 4. PRIMITIVE ENGINE       
First Line: All afternoon and half into dusk, a man and a woman have hur
Last Line: Strokes it, as if charging a primitive engine, the more the old man %fills the room then clears his


VOICES: 5. WHEN THE WORD IS WHISPERED       
First Line: An amateur rockhound's cracking a basket's likeliest
Last Line: Saying (maybe not in these words, but saying) this is the gold one, %this is the chosen one, this is


VOLUNTEERED TO TAKE OVER LAST-MINUTE SCRIPTING OF THE STRIP       
Last Line: Thought hanrahan with a wry look, writing her saying it


WAITING       
First Line: They came that night--the goatsnout ones, and rateye ones
Last Line: Isn't purity. The boy knows: inexperience %is another word for waiting


WAITING THAW       
First Line: This is the day the winter's
Last Line: Day's in the day this is


WAKING ALONE IN A RENTED ROOM .. DESPAIRING TILL PHONE RINGS       
First Line: The ceiling collects %in a single bulb. It burns
Last Line: And there the resemblance ends


WALTZERS       
First Line: Fire and water. Cat and rat. Snake and duckthing
Last Line: Each one was so caught by his own nature


WASHINGTON'S OVENS, ADAMSES' LETTERS    Poem Text    
First Line: There are stories in which the food is so here
Subject(s): Food & Eating; American Revolution


WASHINGTON'S OVENS, ADAMSES' LETTERS       
First Line: There are stories in which the food is so here
Last Line: We're there as they lie down to share their sustenance


WATCH       
First Line: There's a pleiosaur at the dallas-ft. Worth airport
Last Line: Story full of repairwork


WATER PIE; TONIGHT, 12/11/72       
First Line: Tonight the air's too dry, the vents
Last Line: His warm waves of stink on the cold wind
Subject(s): Animals; Dogs


WATERS       
First Line: The graduate students who studied with me
Last Line: Ah! Joo are an aquarium!'


WAY THE NOVEL FUNCTIONS       
First Line: In the s-f story you read then dream, a person is
Last Line: Invisible legs and its feelers, the day on your chest


WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE       
First Line: August night. The hot wind where the air's like soup, the air at your


WE CALL IT BIRTH, BUT IT'S ALSO AS IF       
Last Line: Kick like a dog in sleep


WE'RE JUST ABOUT TO OBSERVE THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE    Poem Text    
First Line: He says in the kitchen. Everywhere else
Subject(s): Universe


WE'RE JUST ABOUT TO OBSERVE THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE       
First Line: He says in the kitchen. Everywhere else


WEAVE    Poem Text    
First Line: Say he's a runner, his borzoi torso wiffles
Subject(s): Human Body; Childhood Memories


WELCOME RELIEF FROM SERIOUS WORK       
First Line: The english are so nice! One night
Last Line: Has become the metest exercise


WERE THOSE GUYS? THE CIA? THE FBI?       
Last Line: Faintly glowing. He passed out again


WHAT DOESN'T HAPPEN       
First Line: A russet touch of late day, when the sun's ...


WHAT PHOTOGRAPHS ARE       
First Line: Here, in this one, cha-cha--everybody called him cha-cha
Last Line: In these photographs, doing for them what ashes did %for the earlier dead at pompeii


WHAT THE DIVA TOLD ME       
First Line: That was the year I had trouble breathing
Last Line: To go home and practice scales


WHAT THE POEM IS ACTUALLY ABOUT: 1. AN EPISTOLARY HISTORY       
First Line: Woman writing a letter (gerard terborch) about 1654
Last Line: Interior with a young woman reading a letter (pieter de hooch) no date given


WHAT THE POEM IS ACTUALLY ABOUT: 1. AN EPISTOLARY HISTORY...       


WHAT THE POEM IS ACTUALLY ABOUT: 2. SWEARING TO LIGHT       
First Line: There are clues -- there are a few clues
Last Line: While in another room of the world, some reviewer strumbles through darkness


WHAT THE POEM IS ACTUALLY ABOUT: 3. LAST NIGHT IN BED       
First Line: Full anger fills our half-sleep
Last Line: On these and these alone alone


WHAT THE POEM IS ACTUALLY ABOUT: 3. LAST NIGHT IN BED       
First Line: Full anger fills our half-sleep
Last Line: With his eye and attention placidly fixed on thse and these alone


WHAT THE POEM IS ACTUALLY ABOUT: 4. AS LONG AS I'M QUOTING       
First Line: Here's a postcard (june 9, 1916)
Last Line: For my life, and for the lives of my friends


WHAT THE POEM IS ACTUALLY ABOUT: 5. THE SHE HERE       
First Line: I jerked the door closed
Last Line: And disappeared into the august night, %butter on a griddle


WHEN WILD BEASTS CHARGE    Poem Text    
First Line: And in march of 1863, the men of their company mutiny
Subject(s): Mutiny; Baker, Sir Samuel (1821-1893); Modigliani, Amedeo (1884-1920)


WHERE THE COLUMNISTS DOWNED A ROUND OR THREE       
Last Line: You don't like ladies? %vera goode


WHILE VERA GOODE, ACE LADY REPORTER       
Last Line: She escapes of course. Another week


WHO HASN'T LOOKED UP AT A PARKING GARAGE       
Last Line: Who hasn't


WHOLE SUMMER       
First Line: She said this. I said that. And so
Last Line: And that whole summer approached it


WHY / SLINKY MARIE'S / NOR / & WHY       
First Line: Bag lady.' I suppose that's what we called her
Last Line: I wanted dual citizenship. %and so these wre my papers


WHY SAINTS HAVE TO BE DEAD       
First Line: Because time is like distance


WILL THE REAL SHAKESPEARE PLEASE STAND UP?       
First Line: The bar is called the duck blind and is decorated with decoy
Last Line: What's the president saying up there? - the soundproofed ovens %of dachau? The vows to the aztec and


WINDOW       
First Line: So I entered her body
Last Line: Staying his hand


WINDOW SEAT       
First Line: At which time I close my roger fry, successfully


WINDOW ZEN       
First Line: These lace drapes make the late light
Last Line: The way it's broken a thousand times or more %by the lace, but without being broken


WINDS       
First Line: These are the nights when I think of the housemaid
Last Line: While working, listening hard to the cry in the wood %and the cloth and the plate and the night wind


WINGS    Poem Text    
First Line: I always wondered why they called them wings
Last Line: People a bird is a rehearsal
Subject(s): Wings; Flight


WINGS       
First Line: I always wondered why they called them wings
Subject(s): Wings


WISH FOR COPPER NAILS       
First Line: Nobody really argues over which video to rent
Last Line: In weathering the long journey


WOMAN BATHING IN A STREAM, 1654       
First Line: That same year, she was summoned
Last Line: A faint faint schema of fire and wings


WON'T LET GO       
First Line: This afternoon I'm obliged to attend a birthday party
Last Line: And somewhere there was a tree with one black leaf for everybody
Subject(s): Change; Parties


WORDS 'AGAIN' AND 'GROOVY'       
First Line: The mucked-up snow from yesterday is frozen
Last Line: --'groove-y,' which is desirable


WORLD ABOVE SUFFERING       
First Line: When my grandfather louie came here, from chicago
Last Line: Poland! Princesses! Palaces!'


WORLD OF EXPECTATIONS       
First Line: What starts with f and ends with u-c-c? Starts
Last Line: And it came %long, red and clamorous. Firetruck
Subject(s): Sex


WORLD TRADE CENTER       
First Line: Miss cherry harvest of 1954 is savvily bing-bedecked
Last Line: Miss us? Miss us. Miss you


WORLDS    Poem Text    
First Line: 1120's not the only year eirik gnupson
Subject(s): Vikings; Earth; World


WOULD YOU KNOW A SNOOK, OR A LARGE-EYED WHIFF, FROM A GOGGLE       
First Line: Add it to the list. Add moazagotl
Last Line: Stand for what we don't know, what's locked %darkly from us under foehn, or any, conditions


WRESTLING WITH EACH OTHER       
First Line: When the president declares the war over
Last Line: The reminding, almost the arguing now, of the rain


Y'CALL SOMEPLACE PARADISE, KISS IT GOODBYE    Poem Text    
First Line: In this faded fifteenth-century expulsion, everything
Subject(s): Childhood Memories


Y'CALL SOMEPLACE PARADISE, KISS IT GOODBYE       
First Line: In this faded fifteenth-century expulsion, everything
Last Line: #name?


YIELD       
First Line: This is how it usually happens: somebody dies
Last Line: Ordinary beauty. You could cry


YOKING OF THE TWO MODES       
First Line: Unto us is given a billboard, its spaghetti the size
Last Line: We want to see god. We are given the egg in its fecal %tiara


YOU HUM    Poem Text    
First Line: My parents sleep with a flashlight
Subject(s): Family Life; Relatives


YOU MIGHT NOTICE BLOOD IN YOUR URINE FOR A COUPLE OF WEEKS/AND SCENES FROM THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION        Recitation by Author


ZENBU       
First Line: A spring day, and its cream-gray sky. We linger
Last Line: And inside, at the story's most naked %god spoke


ZENITH       
First Line: Was the brand name, and that radio made
Last Line: That's here, persistent, %although the station that beamed it is long off the air


ZERO: TERROR / LULLABY    Poem Text    
First Line: If an electron were the size of a four-door car, etc.
Subject(s): Physics


ZERO: TERROR/LULLABYE       
First Line: If an electron were the size of a four-door car,' etc
Last Line: They shaped without even one word


ZILLA       
First Line: It's twilight in the streets of the tabletop tokly, and
Last Line: The monster inside her begin to test the locks of its resting place


ZORAN PERISIC'S       
First Line: Zoptic front-projection system' is what


[THE IMPORTANCE OF ARTISTS' BIOGRAPHIES]    Poem Text    
First Line: The days go by, and then more days go by
Subject(s): Art & Artists


[UNTITLED]    Poem Text    
First Line: =
Subject(s): Death; Dead, The