Samples of the poet’s work:

 
Date at the Trailer Park
 

It may have been heat
          lightning etching its acid
                        silver across

the cobalt sky that silenced
          your unseen neighbor
                        tapping his

shingles in place: all
          I know is I’d been so
                        half-aware

of his presence—hammer
          and stop, hammer, stop,
                        stop—the whole hot

afternoon that just like
          cicadas not singing, I
                        grew slowly

aware of his loss as
          the air supercharged
                        its ions

and the hour, blowing heavy
          and cool and radiant
                        as mother-

of-pearl, weighed us into
          our lawn chairs where you,
                        thought lost

midsentence, hurricane lamp
          unlit, sat and flickered
                        in silence,

some man inside you moving
          more the more your face
                        drew still.

 
Ilium

for Vinnie
 
 

With what great wisdom the world forbids our pleasures to last
 

                                                           Joy chooses us and darts away

For what wouldn’t we give a lover
 

                                  Like the dragonfly that lit on the end of my oar

To suspend that instant and linger

 

                                                                   Lacquered black and gold

Perpetually
 

                                                         Balanced between sky and water

In the pelvic cradle
 

                                                                        I watched him tremble

Bones speaking to bones
 

                                                      And the realm inside me went still

We say let the legion stars extinguish
 

                                                                    Let me dwell here forever

And all night trace the arc of
 

                                                             His beauty almost unbearable

Hipbones the ilium
 

                                                         Wings rising and falling in place

Which like the walls of Troy
 

                                          But we know where this moment’s headed

Enclosing what is most valuable
 

                                    Travel the sole purpose of every particle-wave

Lead us into the sacred city
 

                                                           In the end I must cross the lake

 
Oaks Reflecting
  from Sunset Landscape, Joseph Morviller, 1858
 

How they have loved the lake all summer,
pouring their green hearts into the heart
of the water until their love has lightened

them the way a single heraldic dragonfly
batting the air above your head as you
sit half-sleeping along a fieldstone wall

can lighten your afternoon of any weight but
the weight to remember (all that is ordinary
doomed to pass unnoticed), and you see how oaks

on the brink of autumn shake and think of fire.
How they meditate upon it. How they practice
the names of fire, wanting only to rise above

fear the way water transpires into Heaven
but their thoughts stuck at their feet—fire,
their roots turned to kindling, all they see.

Good monks, the oaks know they should turn
inward, pray, prepare for the crypt of winter,
yet have you ever watched your thoughts

return once, twice, like a flint striking to
the image that undoes you, the word you fear
the most a dark angel on your tongue, oh God

the pleasure of speaking it once more—fire,
it’s all they dream of, that first glowing
spark the wind drops to their doorstep, hours

of silence, smoke wreaths in the hollyhocks,
and then the mighty whoosh, the wall of flame
like a crowd roaring—fire, fire, fire, it’s

why trees in autumn shake, the consummation
of their bodies and each hand become a torch—
it’s all they can see. A world set alight.
 

 
Lava Glow
 

Roses too red to be real. Too throbbing. Floribunda,
             Lava Glow, roses like kamikazes dashing their petals

to the ground. Or maybe it was just me. I was sitting
             by the stone sundial, the time was marked between one

and two and I wanted to get up from the bench but
             kept falling back like the fountain behind me, water

remembering how to fall back to earth that fountain
             swooning like a maiden, the slight hitch, then the fall

back I listened to it over and over, guided tours
             eddied around me, a mother speaking French stumbled

over my feet. I kept thinking of those unholy roses.
             Floribunda, Lava Glow, beauty too fierce to be real

how it hurt me they existed, I couldn’t understand
             it, why I should grieve for beauty, for those isolated

moments that suddenly spring into focus so urgent we
             forget what awaits us—my long return on the subway,

sunburn, Canadian coins, the click of a hotel pass key
             all, in this moment, gone; and wider— the continued

question of my employment still to be answered at home,
             the silence between me and my brother, all the concerns

that make up a life, that low-key cognitive drone each
             of us carries inside us gone, gone, lost in the flick

of a petal as Eternity forces us to our knees. Looking
             I kept looking away, those roses with their flaming

name I feared them like a natural disaster, a trail
             of footprints ablaze—having seen them how can we

forget them? Having remembered, how do we go on?

“Date at the Trailer Park” was published in the New England Review.
“Ilium” was published in the Oregon Review.
“Lava Glow” and “Oaks Reflecting” were published in Icarus.

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