Charles Atkinson taught poetry and nonfiction writing for 30 years at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His first poetry collection, The Only Cure I Know, received the American Book Series award for poetry.
If she asks you, face averted,
to sweep up a fieldmouse carcass
by the back steps, you can just
take the kitchen broom and dustpan
and roll the thing in with a stroke,
chatting as you pry off the garbage can lid;
but then the chance may not c [...]
I've bent over them in the dark,
straddling model train tracks—
bright slivers of moonlight—and Bear,
abandoned on his back, glassy-eyed.
They don't know I come in
to mend the broken track
and return Bear to the pillow
and to ask their for [...]
0 Comments