Baudelaire’s Paysage (a translation)
To compose my sexless eclogues, I will
Bed down near the sky like the astrologers
And, neighbor to bell-towers, listen dreamily
To the somber wind-carried hymns.
Chin in hand, high …
Poetry
-
-
-
The Baby Monitor
The neighbor off to the market for bags of salad
leaves me alone with her baby monitor
I’ve set on my balcony jagged with woodrain-rotted & scarred with yellow …
-
from Holloway Letters
[What She Was In For]
You learn not to ask ‘What are you in for?’
but what she was in for was parking on the road
outside her house to get … -
What You Call It
Not my usual route to the market—past
the railroad tracks, then pastGrace Episcopal Church,
its courtyard empty—no menclasping hands as though agreeing,
finally, to the difficult termsof some treaty—so I …
-
My Neighbors in Lincoln, Nebraska
This poem was translated from its original French (included below) by Patron Kokou Henekou and Zócalo Poetry Editor, Connie Voisine.
I have neighbors
at the corner of N 26th & Holdrege:
the … -
Antiode for Rescue
Inside us runs a map of our cells unmapping
in small gulps, a finite road with no rescuers.
I’m waving from that dead-end where the weeds
wild and lower … -
Portrait of Icarus as a Country on Fire
Can we talk about the wax? The way the wax
would have felt on his skin, slick
at the first signs of melting, a spreading
warmth that felt so good … -
In The Kitchen
So we’re remembering the years
in San Francisco, the apartment
on Gough followed by stays
at two nearby boardinghouses—
breakfast and supper and a double room
at the end of … -
-
Aspirational Self Portrait on the Color Wheel
Lips, perhaps, in Pyrrole Red (pigment used in automotive finishes):
my first car, a small Ford built
to replace (impossible) the Mustang.Eyes designed by Guignet of Paris, who patented the …
-
Mexican American Sublime
From space the river is loose thread. Frayed but clearly discernible.
A wall but not a wall.
At county, a jailer winds it around his neck. Surrenders to unconditional embrace. …