Skip to main content

Donald Platt

Author

Brother Death, Sister Life

Laudato si', mi Signore, per sora nostra Morte corporale     da la quale nullo omo vivente po' scampare. St. Francis        Death is my idiot brother, who comes babbling something I don't yet        understand and throws his arms a [...]

Walt Whitman Wrestling Naked With the Young Trees

       Every time I pass the old sycamore on our corner, I touch its muscled        dappled torso where the smooth flesh emerges from the bark's        rough scales. Its branches drop on the ground their curled sheets       [...]

Forsythia

Whenever I hear someone say "forsythia," that word        exploding into shrapnel petals so abundantly yellow        it sparks the spring from black soil and makes the grass catch flame again        and burn green under my bare f [...]

Psalm for the Summer Solstice

If this life's the only text we have                and each day's a page of longhand, a rough draft of transubstantiating clouds                that change from odalisque to sine curve to pineapple to popcorn kernel   [...]

Welcome Hardings’ Clocks & Music Boxes

When I walk in, the grandfather clocks are chiming at odd                unsynchronized intervals. With all their various tick-tockings, it's like listening                to a hundred leaky faucets fill their porcelain [...]