In the Back Seat of the Car

Hard Pears

I’ve never forgotten
the look on my dad’s face

and the feel of hard pears

whipped at the traffic
behind the summer hedge


In The Back Seat of the Car

My father is loosing his memory
Of the dog spitting up a chicken bone

And the bee sting salved in butter
in the back seat of the car


This God

I feel
God’s hand
Touch the cold bell
Of my heart

This sorrow
Yet to die
For the hundredth
Time

Argil Gardener

I have an audience today
with Bouvard et Pecuchet
for the job of le gardenia
Deus plenteous de loess



Levinas’ Face

for Levinas the face
that I face is the face
that faces the other
a reflection of the face
I face while facing
the face facing the Other
face but face to face
facing the Other that is
the face that faces the I
that is the Other face other
than I which is I the face
that faces the Other
face to face that is I
and Other than I that is I
as Other face to face
with I the Other

Blight of Eyes

skin molt with corm and bone rill choused in the plow of her forehead where I once pressed my lips bloodied with mill-weed and choke and the nettles and

briar tungsten and the yellow corn blight of eyes gone sallow with fretting
and misjudgments and never once a cackle or a sharp invective

(the chaff never separated from the absence of skin)


Omphale’s Whore

ears sheeted with rags
a wailing

neither apiary
nor tallow

could stop

Omphale sluing man
into bivalve, slurry

and conch