Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester Coffee Once a currency of the colonial kings of the seas, Captain.This simple plant. It will grow and die and synthesiseSo why, sir, is it stained? Men enslaved; families separated, Killed.Yet the brew drips, drips, […]
Poetry
Eingang freihalten, bitte
Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester Perhaps motherhood is a solitarywalk down the road of an interrupted dream You point out birds, flowers, how the road arrivesat Spring. Behind you, two balloons dance their strings in your hands. You are heldback on the path, wait at corners, guard against the muffled shadows of […]
Belief
Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester “But you have to believe.” We are standing in her kitchenIn front of the stove. That urgency in my grandmother’s voice soft, yet desperate? […]
2 poems
Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester This Sunday Morning I watch you from the kitchen window, digging in, reaching for the good earth, summer-baked in suspended animation, knee-deep in love. The kids are asking for Daddy, the dog needs to pee, and the coffee has dribbled its last drops into the pot – […]
2 poems
Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester Rialto Blues In May I take the train from Genoa to Venezia Santa Lucia, but I am late, and see you before you see me, standing on the bridge, face hard as Istrian stone. What irony that we should reunite in Venice with its web of artifice—wrecked […]
3 poems
Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester I Heard Her Drumming in the Spring Haw frost comesand light snow duststhe solid ground. I take paper bagsof peanuts,sunflower seeds — black, unhusked— and do the jobyou used to do. I fill the feedershung on a stumpyash tree — a pollard we cut years ago.Binoculars, yours,sit […]
To the Man Sleeping in the Airport
Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester Your arm is reaching into the carpeted walkway,where hundreds travel the gentle slopetoward the cold tile of the ground-floor lobby.Your pink stomach winks through the risein your shirt, keeps watch as the crowd followsin rippling curves to miss your hand, palm-up,your fingers slightly curled as if tied […]
Death Robed in A Gown, So Beautiful, So Majestic
Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester For my Grandfather In the old elm that crowded our backyard fence a lone magpie cawked— a woman was wading her feet through a water that had found its way into her stead, & she cursed heavily— […]