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

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…

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

After Adam Zagajewski I am child to no one, mother to a… wife for the long haul. On fall days I am happy with my dying brethren, the leaves…

I have banked the fires of my body into a small but steady blaze here in the kitchen where the dough has a life of its…

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

When our cars touched When you lifted the hood of mine To see the intimate workings under… When we were bound together By a pulse of pure energy,

When they taught me that what matt… was not the strict iambic line goo… over the page but the variations in that line and the tension produ… on the ear by the surprise of diff…

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.

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

I remember what my father told me: There is an age when you are most… He was just past fifty then, Was it something about the trees t… There is an age when you are most…

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

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