| 1423  6  6   
 | This tall, very blonde, very female, friend of mine. . . .  | 
		
		
			| 1160  6  6   
 | Two girls, twelve years old, run down San Pedro Avenue past the market, the middle school, seven driveways, their small chests heaving.   The smooth soles of their Mary Janes keep slipping on the gravel driveways.    Two men in a rust-orange van bear… | 
		
		
			| 820  5  5   
 | At step blinding speed we all alight somewhere in the world | 
		
		
			| 1270  6  6   
 | Not today.  Even when the Isar  rolls so cool and deep  and I could wade and  wade 'til sleep.    Not today.  When I have the tablets  in a drawer  in a box  winking chalkily at me.    Not today.  When the church tower soars  and it's bells toll out  a seductive beat … | 
		
		
			| 1317  7  6   
 | Now, this boy removed his socks in front of me, on the chair beside my desk where I read my books, and said: “My toenails aren’t shaped properly.” | 
		
		
			| 1286  8  6   
 | Removing the deeply embedded jack-blade frommy naked side, like any slicked-upsplinter, was just a bit jarring on the first bite, on first try, I must admit. I freelydo so now to your frozen-over faces. You made your… | 
		
		
			| 2081  6  4   
 | The last time Ray and I broke up, I flew my flag at half-mast. It was the kind of thing that pissed him off. He was very big on flag etiquette: how the flag should be folded, the fact that it should never touch the ground, when to fly it at half-mast, the rules regarding… | 
		
		
			| 237  7  6   
 |  | 
		
		
			| 2521  4  2   
 | The proud, burly tree / Rests on the now crashed TV / Thanks a lot, nature | 
		
		
			| 1915  8  6   
 | Sal, a finder of misplaced objects notices the sunglasses, flip flops and boxers left on the pathway heading to the beach. They are his gifts today, so gallant is he of these ‘strays’ seeking ownership. He tries the glasses on first and feels dizzy. | 
		
		
			| 1107  8  6   
 | my time there was not one afternoon not / one river not one tunnel not one falling | 
		
		
			| 1558  6  6   
 | Ok, so I’m sitting here trying to write through a frigging cold. And I. . .Oops, . . . . . . wait a sec!. . . I’m stopped, astounded, stunned between coughing my left lung clear over my keyboard and watching it flopping on the back of my desk. . .   | 
		
		
			| 1256  6  6   
 | I'll still want the blinds open
and the lights on,
to see the papier-mache of our flesh
fighting death away to the century mark,
even if you only want to live until 
a ripe eighty-two.  | 
		
		
			| 1167  7  6   
 | bullets in flight make sharp, snapping noises. | 
		
		
			| 2845  11  6   
 | This poem begins my poetry collection. It is about the pain and suffering I experienced when I had an attack of two pulmonary embolisms, one in the right lung, one in the left. This nearly killed me. I lived with the pain in my lungs whenever I took a bre | 
		
		
			| 1533  6  6   
 | He begins talking about string theory. He reels me back in, from the dinosaurs to the infinite, human evolution and alternate dimensions, until it makes so little sense that everything makes sense. | 
		
		
			| 1413  10  6   
 | I enjoy launching words into space. Please dangle a  moment here while I prepare the next sentence. Ok. You can come in now. Take  boiling for instance. And hawsers. The sound of words on a sheet of paper. The  manifesto for a roll of sleep. Sleep is oblivious to… | 
		
		
			| 1405  8  4   
 | The Houston police devised a punishment for the adulterous thespian that would not hurt the nights or household income of his French young wife. | 
		
		
			| 1406  6  7   
 | Except where its waves break gently,/
white frothed and reassuring along the shore, | 
		
		
			| 990  10  6   
 | Mothers and sons and war, an old story... | 
		
		
			| 1740  8  6   
 | There was something wrong with this picture.  Was he the man she had slept with last night?  | 
		
		
			| 2092  8  4   
 | All the neighborhood kids waited for the school bus on a small cement slab at the bottom of the first big hill on Blackhorse Road. My mother made me scrambled egg sandwiches on wheat toast every morning for breakfast before I left for school. Then one mor | 
		
		
			| 1163  15  5   
 | Her captors allowed her the use of the toes of one foot. It was hard to pretend she was numb—as if playing an artic game indoors. With the ball of her foot, she primed the canvas. Her big toe acted as a fan brush, the rest were sable, flat, or pointy. She told… | 
		
		
			| 1218  6  6   
 | I polished his shoes to an avid black; sewed buttons backand mended torn silk and cotton.His clothing was my busy work. Needle, thread, stitch, and iron,I was his apothecary of linens.Blood, wine, soup, vomit --these I cleaned too, until all theircolor and scent… | 
		
		
			| 1393  10  7   
 | The tech turns off the music. The capsule blares. I am in Jurassic Park with Sam Neill. I am Timmy, descending the electrified fence, almost toast. I am Karen Silkwood, a deer in the headlights, then showering off plutonium. A garbage truck is compacting  | 
		
		
			| 1361  7  5   
 | I was tired and lonesome when I checked into another insufferable, shop-worn Holiday Inn. It was the only motel around with the internet — dial up only — in that little jerkwater town, Notmuch, Alabama. It was too late for a nap, so I jumped in the shower,… | 
		
		
			| 2118  13  5   
 | It was already dead and was hanging from her ceiling. | 
		
		
			| 754  6  5   
 | po-mo parchments piled high deep: / credentials earnest transcripts earned / 
coursework scholarships helpt buy. | 
		
		
			| 1199  6  6   
 | I'd like to grow you a new flower. I thinkmaybe I just will. Right now. Here's as good a place as any. Well you'll probably never get to see it, but it will be there just the same and it will be all yours. Kind of like these poems that I make if… | 
		
		
			| 1347  8  5   
 | The women were increasing their writing in the restroom.  I asked you later why women only talk on restroom walls, and you said, why do men only talk on restroom walls?  I told you as much as I could remember of what had been written. |