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Two Poems

insomniacs gesturing in a cave of neon light the narrative of their lives

Two Surgeons

Two surgeons vaulted over a counter to hold open my incisions.

Two Years

He had looked on it a thousand times and it never failed to kill him.

Type A

My first true love was Underwood, my mother’s typewriter.

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Wang Wei

Upon Asking the Cashier at Kroger to Scan That Old Tattoo of a Barcode on My Forearm

Turns out my body’s a dollar sweet potato, her screen said.

Vanishing Point

The kissed fingerpad touched wet with wine orbiting.

Villanelle

Omens from the Lord, or Nature, the clouds, some darker silhouette.

Visible Empire

“You mean to fall in love with your wife while I’m gone,” she said.

Vivaldi in the Park

Enough with the stranger, their transcendent experience of art.

Wait

What I really meant to say is that I am tired. Beauty can demand so much.

Wants

I had promised my children to end the war before they grew up.

War Widow

You smile into the phone static, the breath of your beloved.

Wasps

Severe knobs of head and tail: one a horn of venom, the other masked.

Water Ghosts

I was only five when Dad told me I had died. “You drowned,” he said.

Wax

I wonder if those tiny computers in pigeons’ brains ever crash?

We Never Stop Talking about Our Mothers

Her husband is away at the family cabin, and she is glad for the space.

We Said Our Common Ancestor Was Eve

We fed our dreams inevitable sins, the kind you lie about till you grow mean.

Wellfleet

This morning drifts of sand hissed along the shore like mist.

Whale Shark

We pull up alongside the great body. The fin marks the spot.

What This Elegy Wants

It wants to name the dead—without a name you wander lost in the sky.

What Would You Have Me Do?

We’d never had a cross word, but I’d never corrected him.

What You Mistook as Ultimatum

Wrung taut & tender at the soft play of fingertips, we breathe desires. Laughter takes refuge in bodies no longer coaxed to move. Nature becomes a thought.

What’s Happening

Where will we go and how will we steer when the cars are gone?

When Enough Is Enough: Age and the Creative Impulse

What about writers who come suddenly into full power late in life?

When Enough Is Enough: Age and the Creative Impulse

What about writers who come suddenly into full power late in life?

When I Knew Stephen Crane

If he could not evade a serious question by a joke, he bolted.

Where Are We Going?

I hightailed it out of the hospital like my ex-wife was a prison I’d escaped.

White Houses

I open the door and Eleanor is leaning against the wall, paper white.

Why I Don’t Want to Live Forever

I make a point of smelling the lilac every day that first week in May.