May 2008

Monaco was clean, with small clean streets.
There was not much in the way of  a shore.
There was hardly any place to go.
One clipped, well-behaved London plane tree,
not welcoming like most ordinary trees,
was kept apart...

There is a moment before a shape
hardens, a color sets.
Before the fixative or heat of   kiln.
The letter might still be taken
from the mailbox.
The hand held back by the elbow,
the word kept between the larynx pulse   
and the amplifying drum-skin of the...

Cancer loves the long bone,
the femur and the fibula,
the humerus and ulna,
the greyhound’s sleek physique,
a calumet, ribboned with fur
and eddies of dust churned to a smoke,
the sweet slenderness of that languorous
lick of calcium, like an ivory flute or a stalk
of ...