Poetry

I remain this tender, yearning 
to mend the flattened red wingage of every lantern 
fly that lingers on the stranger’s heels.

a lot of talk about peace is talk about talks
and talks about the size 
or shape of tables

He’s never been on this railway line before.

not a voice—a trajectory 
                                       of wings

Is programming not a kind of poetry?
Ones and zeros of the heart.

Who knows how many of us 
                                                  you’ve killed, dead set 
on what flows beneath, your mouth

At thirty, I am a child again learning
banana, apple, and orange,
clasping words and fumbling my meanings.

Driving in the American West, reading Celan
and the Mahabharata. After the war,
Arjuna drops the bow forged by Brahma back
into the ocean, relinquishing it

In those days when I was the academy’s darling 
I borrowed phrases and made no claims, 
digressed gracefully from every absent thesis