Into the gravity of my life, the serious ceremonies of polish and paper and pen, has come this manic animal

Some say it was a pear Eve ate. Why else the shape of the womb,

For Jews, the Cossacks are always… Therefore I think the sun spot on… is melanoma. Therefore I celebrat… New Year’s Eve by counting my annual dead.

I am only leaving you for a handful of days but it feels as thought i will be gone forever the way the door closes

I married you for all the wrong re… charmed by your dangerous family h… by the innocent muscles, bulging l… weapons under your shirt, by your… the colors of painted scraps of su…

What we want is never simple. We move among the things we thought we wanted: a face, a room, an open book

It was early May, I think a moment of lilac or dogwood when so many promises are made it hardly matters if a few are bro… My mother and father still hovered

The door of winter is frozen shut, and like the bodies of long extinct animals, cars lie abandoned wherever

When I taught you at eight to ride a bicycle, loping along beside you as you wobbled away

January Contorted by wind, mere armatures for ice or snow, the trees resolve to endure for now,

Finding a new poet is like finding a new wildflower out in the woods. You don’t see its name in the flower books, and nobody you tell believes

I sing a song of the croissant and of the wily French who trick themselves daily back to the world

The gathering family throws shadows around us, it is the late afternoon Of the family. There is still enough light

1. THE SACRIFICE On this tile the knife like a sickle-moon hangs in the painted air

I want to write you a love poem as headlong as our creek after thaw when we stand