Love’s Executioner
I come from a proud Polish poet sent to Siberia, right
arm cut from his body, punishment for poems—
the first daughter of a man from Naples who was
a baby in a ship’s hold, women screaming and praying
Tributes
The Heart, Like A Bocce Ball
The jack sits low in the grass. We’re dead drunk,
cannonballing across the lawn, gouging
handful divots, each of us still nursing
a tumbler of scotch brought home from the wake.
Nostos
We had not quite been arguing
that night—but talking, discussing
how I answer any mood of yours
that falls below cheery contentment
with a litany of solutions
Migrants
Strong boys to work on the farm.
The sad lot of migrants in the shadows.
The emaciated look of Mother Africa.
The uncertainties of the desert girls.
Hounslow 1997
I am swallowed up in a red winter coat.
Dad is collecting me for the weekend.
Brother
though a child, you became a god
when you lit your first fire.
learning almost nothing to be unburnable
was how you learned love, finance,
the charms of delinquency, and war.