Concrete or Pattern Poetry

I
remember I exist
at the braiding of
             consciousand con
          sumer,Kanaka
        and culpable,
      desire anddesired…

Oh didn’t it """   """    """
                   ""      ""
                   ""      ""
                   ""      ""
                                "    
      ""                       "
           ""
                     ""
                     ""            ""
      rain
              ""
                                ""
                      ""    ""   ""
Oh did
           """      """       n’t…

                                                all     all
                                        all     all        

A type of poetry where the visual arrangement of text and space forms a meaningful shape or image.

I
see you,
peeping Tom,
beside yourself with
rage at what I done did,
hands gone idle from deprivation.
I see you, Uncle, with your fingers at the
trapdoor, to place crumbs of a biscuit at my mouth
in the dark. Through a hole the size of a...

I am
a product
of my time.
Time is a body
that resembles
a sound without a scale.
Forever foreclosed fortitude.
In heaven, the dinner bell rings
as elegy. The porch-light stars turn
on their mothering moths. Betrayal
takes at least two, and wherever two
or more are gathered, I am...

                     a muted longing for      a
             being of elsewhere without     a
             boundary or    a
       body like  a
ball to throw me around in    a
   pig skin of public parts
      of policies    zero
   privacies of every
     body  gets   a
   turn to frisk me of
numbered bodies &
   trophied bodies &
     saturated bodies...

I’ll keep this brief. I remember the shock of Mr. G’s tiger-striped trunks
at the Madras Gymkhana Club. Nothing to conceal, everything to
declare, like a Mills & Boon hero. Shiver of ball and sack, acres
of  hairy scrub. We could not imagine...

This
far north
the sun rises
and sinks in the
same spot. Insects
announce the apocalypse
and fog moves through all
the uncountable hours like a
bright gray scar. The forest is
awash in a dial of light more
luminiferous than a Canaletto. I
misuse the words  forest, woodland,
jungle because I...

       Long     fing-     ers,       how
       signals   flow      up         them
        from      tip       and       finger-
         print   ...

Our love still young,                              our marriage new,
  Robert and I                                 ...

          The United Negro Improvement Association,
        he says, his little bloodshot eyes looking out
       of the dark shadows of his overhanging black
   brow. His eyebrows quizzical, halfway to a smile.
And over them,...

I surrender my weapons:
Catapult Tears, Rain-Cloud Hat,
Lip Zip, Brittle Coat, Taut Teeth
in guarded rows. Pluck this plate
of armor from my ear, drop
it in the Amnesty Bin,
watch my sadness land among
the dark shapes of memory.

Unarmed, now see me saunter
past Ticking Baggage,...

in Just-
spring          when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old...

*Ofury-bedecked!O glitter-torn!Let the wild wind erectbonbonbonanzas; junipers affectfrostyfreeze turbans; iciclestuff adornall cuckolded creation in a madcap crown of horn!It’s a new day; no scapegrace of a secttidying up the ashtrays playing Daughter-in-Law Elect;bells! bibelots! popsicle cigars! shatter the glassware! a...

Cherry plums suck a week’s soak,
overnight they explode into the scenery of before
your touch. The curtains open on the end of our past.
Pink trumpets on the vines bare to the hummingbirds.
Butterflies unclasp from the purse of their couplings, they
light and...

Every tripod-
toting birder
knows it never
nests on urban

girders. Even
fences set its
scalded-crimson
head askew, its

waddle swinging,
wings akimbo.
Few have got it
on their lists and

fewer still have
caught it singing,
this endangered
North American

candor, cousin
of the done-in
dodo, big-eyed
Big Sur tremor-

tenor — only
ten or twenty
hang glide over
Modoc County,

humbly numbered
(as...