This poem visited me insistently over a period of weeks, demanding that I write down the stanzas even in the middle of the night, in the dark, on a pad I kept on my bedside stand. I had become fed up with cries of doom I’d been hearing from many…
You know how when you’re hiking and you come over a rise and see below you a lake – as flat as gravity can make it, blue-lit by the sky; edges fringed with summer-leaved trees? And the very waterness of it, its placidity, the surprise: and something in you relaxes…
Sunday Soapbox: The Town Center Every town needs a center, a central square, a plaza – just as all old towns used to have, and in many parts of the world still do. Just as every person needs a center, and every atom has a center. Towns without centers make…
Today I Killed My Bank Account Today I killed my bank account It had kept on biting me Indifferent tellers riding on its camel back Numbers jumble me like bad backass dreams I find in my alphabet soup So I took revenge I don’t pay rent,…
Sneezelight Next time you have to sneeze, just Think about the top of your head, Just Focus on the top of your head Keep focusing! Through all temptation stay Right faithful to The top of your head The sneeze will lift up like a…
Garden Club Outside it’s snowing wetly A woman sits in a maroon chair With a stripey calm design in it I see her from above Numerous ladies hum practical, Practical hymns Getting loaf-cake in the kitchen Filling up the chairs A huge…
I’m visiting Santa Cruz just now and my conclusion is this: the thing wrong with America, weird human consciousness notwithstanding, can be expressed in one word: cars. If there weren’t any, all these people would be milling about still, but that would feel cozy rather than threatening – because they…
Dancing in my mother’s living room in Oregon filmed by her significant other, Al Getty…
This book was published in 1974 by Red Dot Press, a division of Hanging Loose magazine in New York. I was invited to submit the manuscript for the first book-publishing venture of this long-running literary periodical. The poems and short stories are in chronological order, beginning with one written at…
dark pension hall you approach white and nervous in dark drug alert she killed you the mother stabbed that snake-slim tree white flesh home i have stroked in infinite undoing now you see her in doorknobs in dark…
The short-bladed knife slices pirate bread Candles light cheeks round above the fur like eggs in straw. We live in a boat’s duck-belly, six of us frying onions slicing bread by candlelight Oats falling like stars onto the green wood.
Night before last was one of the most incredible good earth things – Richard invited us over for dinner. We got there, bathed and shiny, long dresses, on our bicycles. I had made coconut – avocado cookies and brought them with a pale green cloth in an Indian basket, over…
