July/August 2011

The wind that makes your hair grow faster
opens a child’s mouth full of strawberry and sand.
Slow and sure
on the scales of the ocean
the child’s head outweighs the sun.

Inside of the wind—
                                       a blister of a church,
its walls thicker...

First, J. Robert Oppenheimer wrote his paper on dwarf stars—“What happens to a massive star that burns out?” he asked. His calculations suggested that instead of collapsing it would contract indefinitely, under the force of its own gravity. The bright...

Sei allem Abschied voran: half

a line from Rilke’s Die Sonettean Orpheus as my motto,

I rehearsed my elegiac art(“be in advance of all parting”)

and won, I thought, with each song deeper,until I stood before the keeper

in whom I’ve come to recognize...