#AmericanWriters
In Eden, Adam Had been so busy Making up smug Nouns of dominion, He hadn’t watched
I felt both pleasure and a shiver as we undressed on the slippery ba… and then plunged into the wild riv… I waded in; she entered as a diver… Watching her pale flanks slice the…
How beautiful they were, Adam thought— These beasts and birds; These tall grasses And flowering trees.
Snapping turtles in the pond eat b… and frogs. They do us no harm when… But early this spring two Canada… lingered, then built a nest. What… heard of, our neighbor feared: gos…
Nouns were a giant Confining— Adam felt the sounds He made Build bars around
Grieving came from leaving Eden But leaving Eden was not grief— It was a lesson in lessening— How things, diminishing, Become more precious.
Now we must get up quickly, dress ourselves, and run away. Because it surrounds us, because they are coming with wolves on lea… because I stood just now at the wi…
After our march from the Hudson t… of Cemetery Hill, we Boy Scouts… the sermons and hot sun while Girl… lolled among graves in the maple s… When members of the veterans’ hono…
Here’s a seed. Food for a week. Cow skull in the pasture; back room where the brain was: spacious hut for me.
As the sheriff remarked: I had no business being there. He was right, but for the wrong reasons. Among that odd crew of volunteers from the North, I was by far the most inept and least ...
Hunkered down, nerve-numb, in the carnal hut, the cave of self, while outside a storm rages.
My parents and the parents of others were pillars of meat the sky’s blue roof rested on. Around them grew flowers with stalks so thin they bent
God planned a static planet, With plants that bore No offspring—as if Acts had no consequence. But Eve was there to change
To the trees, leaving Came naturally— A green extension Of their being. But for Adam and Eve
I stood inside myself like a dead tree or a tower. I pulled the rope of braided hair and high above me
