I’d met this crowd of drunken poets from San Francisco Even though this was smack dab in the middle of winter Smack dab in the middle of the flattened Illinois plains Why they all left San Francisco I’ll never completely understand But there we we

The Phoenix Asks the Turtle-Dove if He Can Get a Drop of Water: After Shakespeare — In the style of Ted Hughes Let the bugling bird come up that burst a big loud lay, On the solitary tree of old Arabia (sound its thunder!):…

Pity would have been appropriate. Yet, townsfolk whispered behind his back. Shouldn't he do something about it. So lazy. A gluttonous swine. Hadn't his mother kept him too long at tit, breastfeeding ‘til four? Look. Look at him now. A fat man. Our enormou

The main street has turned into the lowland of dust devils, with the red sun scorching, continuing to serve the living like a giant blood pentacle.It looks like a heathen ritual invoking an ugly looking God with wings or horns, but beneath the whirlwind of rising…

She came to him with her arms open and a smile on her face; the kind of smile that assured him everything would be fine. He longed for that smile for months now; seeing her wearing that smile that he…

I don't have the feelings of self-worth a young woman should have, Monica Lewinsky tells the nation. She seems to understand there will always be some amount of ice beneath her.

Oh it's another one of those strange thrill rides slowly building from a buzz saw whisperinto cool morning's consciousness, coming on and crawling through the moon's mattress like a silver stream and under the dented pillow where…

Max understood this perfectly and could easily picture the slow-motion buckling of the spars and the accordion collapse of the fuselage as the propeller blades’ churned up the ground.

“Don’t ever call me that name, formal or informal, okay? Forget you heard it.”

Many colored eyes move slow between the mirror and my heart, begging questions. I offer no explanation. None suffice to breed either my content or theirs.

Handsome are the houses,effigies in synthetic stucco: prosperity divinedbehind parted walls. Behold the ersatz simplicityof the residential subdivision, contrived construction inline and line and line. …

I've been floating dearadriftI could not see you clearlythrough the tattered, hazy scrim the boundary between usmight as well have been a canyonyou reached for me anda vice tightenedaround my headI wanted to merge with youmy heart wished for abrilliant explosion of limb…

You don’t want to tango with me, she said.

I think I know that fly That fly followed us from our apartment on W. 11th St When I opened the door he flew right in and when we left, he flew right out again Followed us on the subway to Times Square Took the Shuttle apparently Followed

. . . he's of mixed race. Along with European blood, he's got Mexican Indian and African blood. Here's the irony. He don't look nothing like a white European man but he thinks like one.