At night, it is a relief to fall asleep to the hum of an air-conditioning unit instead of the crackle of small arms fire
If a big mouth fits, wear it.
But it wears thin, especially across a globe
northern eye war oven my plaque this often moon
after work-up my roam listing some mosaic
tinting some sturdy team in when off came on
could give a flying fuck about the boundaries, the barbed
walls flung up by far too many schools of poetry from San
Francisco to Iowa City to New York. I, too, love to read
poetry – it saved my life – I don’t want to take up arms
The stronger case for optimism lies
elsewhere. Corporate retrenchments may
be slowing, and other sources of job loss –
weak overall demand, an expanding trade
deficit – may be ebbing. As companies see
her eyes are misaligned, her mouth is sus-
piciously pursed, her stockings are bunched at
the knees, even the bobby pins on her white
headband have slipped below her eyes. Wearing
identical frocks, the girls are standing so close
that they seem to be joined in one body
He doesn’t know where or how to begin. His lines, some
straight, some arced, arched, twisted and turned
around another, abrupt, rude or opaque white, don’t
signal the start he desired. But that’s something,
finally, desire, which perhaps leads to birth,
to a helpless life crawling, a bubbling, toddling,
skipping, shuffling. Isn’t this beginning really an end