(1987)
Reprinted with permission of "Hellas," Vol. 8
Because far more than friendship,… Youg Willy craved the gleaming, w… That, sparkling on the dealer’s lo… Of slashing flights toward any dis… Whose neon gleam avoided grimy mil…
He could not paint a world that g… For his shimmered softly. His cliffs, cathedrals, seas appe… congenial things of liquid light; and even locomotives seem
Get meat, a gobbet red and rank, something gamy from a back-street… ring with bits of pork and lots of… with herbs for accents eastern; and finally steep in a fishy stock
Electrocutions show our love of ri… We give the favored one a kingly f… As well as pen and ink so he can w… The thoughts that we will prize wh… We see his needs are carefully add…
Kinds of Dignity 1. A Parade: Once in his life the veteran had a chance to do a t… remote from termites, drains and f…
The Inmate (a sestina) My parents, souls revering freedom… took turns at serving as my jailer to show me how constraints are rig…
Kings once favored beheadings; and when it was their turn, so did angry peasants America chose a different tableau: Black hoods, elaborate nooses
Poesy’s Progress My rhymes are gone, at least quite… my lines are stop– ped just anywhere. The meter is, no doubt, unconscion…
Once within his grinding life He’d had a chance at distant deeds That had no hint of daily strife, Of sticking doors, tenacious weeds… Of time cards, office drudgery,
Now, the fathers, having suffered… prospering, gave unto their begotten plowshare… seeds that their begotten might also pro…
My wife not being speculative, I requested her philosophy, what her thoughts on life and deat… and, while she put away a pan, she… well, I’ll just bumble around unt…
Poetry Editors To Poets Don’t send us dull pentameters; That stuff’s for Keats and other… Submit no rhyme, but heaven knows We hate a poem that sounds like pr…
Verse now slain by latest dogma, down the cobbled street come mourn… trundling Verse’s coffin forward, charging all to note the corpus, garroted for disregarding
A Grecian corpse’s mouth containe… Placed there by kin who thought he… To pay the toll required to cross… (A job that Charon got through po… He sold another chit for their ret…
He with pregnant wife, Sneaking out the back And down the broken stairs, To score some grass or crack. Threading through the alley,
