#AmericanWriters
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
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…
Hunkered down, nerve-numb, in the carnal hut, the cave of self, while outside a storm rages.
How beautiful they were, Adam thought— These beasts and birds; These tall grasses And flowering trees.
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…
Nouns were a giant Confining— Adam felt the sounds He made Build bars around
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 ...
To the trees, leaving Came naturally— A green extension Of their being. But for Adam and Eve
Here’s a seed. Food for a week. Cow skull in the pasture; back room where the brain was: spacious hut for me.
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…
God wanted labels That would stick To fur or bark or leaf. Hadn’t he given Adam A tongue?
The deer carcass hangs from a raft… Wrapped in blankets, a boy keeps w… from a pile of loose hay. Then he… and dreams about a death that is c… Inside him, there are small bones
In Eden, Adam Had been so busy Making up smug Nouns of dominion, He hadn’t watched
Grieving came from leaving Eden But leaving Eden was not grief— It was a lesson in lessening— How things, diminishing, Become more precious.
