#AmericanWriters
The first snow of the year & you lying between my breasts in my husband’s house & the snow gently rising in my… like guilt,
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia: di doman non c’e certezza. —Lorenzo di Medici In the poplars’ lengthening shadow… amid the rows of marigolds and ear…
Because I am here anchoring you to the passionate darkness, you gaze out the window at the light.
center The best slave does not need to be beaten. She beats herself. Not with a leather whip,
Testing the soul’s mettle, the frost heaves holes in the roads to the heart, the glass forest
You open to me a little, then grow afraid and close again, a small boy
Endless duplication of lives and o… —Theodore Roethke I have known the imperial power of… the awesome indifference of recept… I have been intimidated by desk &a…
The man under the bed The man who has been there for yea… The man who waits for my floating… The man who is silent as dustballs… The man whose breath is the breath…
People who live by the sea understand eternity. They copy the curves of the waves, their hearts beat with the tides, & the saltiness of their blood
In the glass-bottomed boat of our lives, we putter along gazing at the other world under the sea– that world of flickering
‘Death is our eternal companion,’… —Carlos Castaneda My death looks exactly like me. She lives to my left,
The poet fears failure & so she says “Hold on pen— what if the critics hate me?”
Now, moving in, cartons on the flo… the radio playing to bare walls, picture hooks left stranded in the unsoiled squares where pain… and something reminding us
Sweet muse with bitter milk, I have lain between your breasts, put my ear
Rising in the morning like warm bread, from a bed in America, the aroma