Making a FistFor the first time, on the road north of Tampico,I felt the life sliding out of me,a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.I was seven, I lay in the carwatching...

Because sometimes I live in a hurricane of wordsand not one of them can save me.

KindnessBefore you know what kindness really isyou must lose things,feel the future dissolve in a momentlike salt in a weakened broth.What you held in your hand,what you counted and carefully saved,all this must go so...

Boy and EggEvery few minutes, he wantsto march the trail of flattened rye grassback to the house of mutteringhens. He too could makea bed in hay. Yesterday the egg so freshit felt hot in his...

I Still Have Everything You Gave MeIt is dusty on the edges.It is slightly rotten.I guard it without thinking.I focus on it once a yearwhen I shake it out in the wind.I do not ache.I...

Let me peer out at the worldthrough your lens. (Maybe I’ll shudder,or gasp, or tilt my head in a question.)Let me see how your blueis my turquoise and my orangeis your gold. Suddenly binarystars, we...

The RiderA boy told meif he roller-skated fast enoughhis loneliness couldn’t catch up to him,the best reason I ever heard for trying to be a champion.What I wonder tonightpedaling hard down King William Streetis if...

only kindness that raises its headfrom the crowd of the world to sayit is I you have been looking for,and then goes with you everywherelike a shadow or a friend.

Here’s my address,write me a poem,” deserves something in reply.So I’ll tell a secret instead:poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,they are sleeping. They are the shadowsdrifting across our ceilings the moment before we...

like our parents alwaystold us not to likefirefighters warn againstwe’re playinggames and makingthe rules upas we go we’rematchingwarmth to warmthstarting fires burningwishes into ourskin we’re hiddenholdingforbidden lightswe’re childrenwhose fathers havenever taught nevertouchbut we’re findingthese new...

I’m like the weather, never really can predict when this rain cloud’s gonna burst; when it’s the high or it’s the low, when you might need a light jacket.Sometimes I’m the slush that sticks to...

you will never catch up.Walk around feeling like a leafknow you could tumble at any second.Then decide what to do with your time.–The Art of Disappearing

Poetry [is] more necessary than ever as a fire to light our tongues.

We dropped our troubles into the lap of the storyteller, and they turned into someone else’s.

It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don’t have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables...

The person you have known a long tme is embedded in you like a jewel. The person you have just met casts out a few glistening beams & you are fascinated to see more of...