Category: Poetry

Why do I find this moment so exquisite, so rare? ‘S’Wonderful,’ the blonde woman plays on a fine old Steinway I taste the salad–exotic greens, Gorgonzola Blue, candied pecans–and sip a smooth dry Chandon cocktail. in this most elegant of San Francisco restaurants The piano notes slide like fresh oysters into the almost breathing space,…

98 in the shade as ravens circle up to the sun Heat shimmers from the slickrock the air is hot still silent Here in the shade a rattler waits under a juniper tree for the afternoon wind Here in the shade I sit still look at marks some old ones painted on the sinuous canyon…

WHAT I GOT FROM AM RADIO It never occurred to me in all these years of listening to rock and roll that I signed up a long time ago for perpetual teenage torture. It was always a bad moon rising over my hopes that some cute boy would ask me out. Always running on empty…

My father died in Texas bound and tied to dreams of love developed dancing to jazz and going downtown in the suburbs, to the movies died still longing for Ava, Rita, or any bleached blonde dame languorous on a chaise, bored, martinis dry, the air thick with sex wanted a Varda girl for a wife,…

it was 8:30 and the LA streets were empty, the air silky warm everywhere there were flowers–in the trees, in gardens, on the hedges–tulips, daffodils, begonias, , colors everywhere and birds singing. Then, loping easily and proud right down the centerline of Montana Street, is a coyote- thick coated and beautiful, still wild, casually self-assured…

As I stand at the edge of the canyon I suddenly remember an old soft-focus black and white my father took of his city bride astride a palomino his raven-haired bride with dark Indian eyes She is beautiful and strange at once and she is smiling into some vague and wonderful future this man promises…

For three years or so, really in order to know, in order to make order of a scattered life, I have been making shelters shrines structures in the shape of houses, though I have found no Simplicity pattern to follow have found no Good Housekeeping seal to vindicate my plans I simply find things lying…

The chair she sits in every afternoon embroidering for the day some fine young man will come to her daughter, will come to the cathedral, come to give her grandchildren stands empty now at noon, vacant by the geraniums she set outside this morning stands near other chairs just like it, empty on the cobblestones…