You operate on the afternoon You perform open heart surgery on the ghosts of your suicidal friends You divorce your parents

I was sick of being a woman, sick of the pain, the irrelevant detail of sex, my own concavity uselessly hungering

‘Why do you have stripes in your forehead, Mama? Are you

A bespectacled artist called Lear First perfected this smile in a sn… He was clever and witty; He gave life to this ditty - That original author called Lear.

You gave me the child that seamed my belly & stitched up my life. You gave me: one book of love poem… five years of peace

Sweet muse with bitter milk, I have lain between your breasts, put my ear

Is God the one who eats the meat off the bones of dead people? —Molly Miranda Jong—Fast, age 3… God is the one, Molly,

Broken ivories playing the blue piano of the sea. We have come

Knowing our lives a drowse towards death (attended by dogs & children) how can it not matter

I want to understand the steep thi… that climbs ladders in your throat… I can’t make sense of you. Everywhere I look you’re there— a vast landmark, a volcano

A delicate border. A nonexistent… The train obligingly dissolves in… The G.I. next to me is talking wa… I don’t ‘know the Asian mind,’ he… Moving through old arguments.

For David Karetsky (April 14, 19… Putting the skis down in the white snow, the wind singing, the blizzard of time

You call me courageous, I who grew up gnawing on books, as some kids

I pass to the other side of the pa… —Pablo Neruda On the other side of the page where the last days go, where the lost poems go,

For Naomi Lazard Sometimes I can’t wait until I… —Naomi Lazard My friends are tired. The ones who are married are tired