Eight Rants

The Fatso

Venus is rising. She's muttering,
A sober chick is a sullen trick.

Madinat al-Zahra—wasn't that the name
of my jasmine ruin, my source of jasmine
when, trailing Lorca and the Sephardim,

By now, sir, you expect a second installment.
What novel is worth its ink if the hero's ship
never finishes sinking, if the cold tide

How formal and polite,
How grave they look, burdened with earnest thoughts,
In all these set-up sepia stills,

Lady of the two feathers; the Nile where your shoulders
should have been, the way I was born out of your head
whole, out of your wig-crown and frozen oneeye; limestone

The Wife to Potiphar

Regret his imprisonment? Yes! I wanted him dead.
But a month or two of Egyptian penal correction
Should serve the purpose. No, I don't miss him, not now.

We hiked up a canyon in the cold summer rain.
It was late in the day and on the mountain
across the canyon there was a section of

Birds of Riverside Park

As thrushes start together all at once.
Abrupt and charming when they sense the dusk
That was long coming now has come, we lie

Destination, in the land of never enough,
   is the cornice of all I can give / all that I know,
         given over to deep blue sky.

Do not let the bow scare you;

         it is for drawing back—