At Sunset

In this light you think life,

your life, could begin anew.  Such

is its strength.  It draws buds

from cold branches.

What regrets you have,

you have.  They are like knots

in wood.  You grow

around them.

Stay

until the last cloud

catches fire

and smokes into stars.

The Kitchen Table

.

The mother pushes a rolling pin
over a mound of dough
in that tiny kitchen
warmer than the rest of the house.

Pale winter light
sifts through the window
while her boy draws with his finger
in the flour dusted on the table
a city with its walls,
the paths of nomads
wandering endless plains.

.

Court Street

.

this little girl
pulls her

rusted
rumbling wagon

down the rubbled
sidewalk

carting a torn
fabric doll

an eye missing
the other

loose
and glossy

a penny
blinks

in the dusty
gutter puddle

.

The Window

.

draws in
the cool
evening air

crickets
trees shadowed
on the quieting sky

distant church
bell chimes
above the rooftops

a boy walks from
the yellow glow
of a street lamp

flicking
his nickel
in the air

with his thumb
and loses it
in the stars

.

A Childhood in China

.

She asks where she comes from.
Her mother tells her
they picked her out of the garbage,
for pity’s sake. A village so remote
they never saw a train, never mind a car.
The rice rations ran out,
so they ate pumpkins for a month.
A classmate, seeing a pink eraser
for the first time, ate it, thinking it was candy.
The only one with a sweater,
of the few with shoes, she was allowed to eat
a whole egg, by herself, for her birthday.
Father stalking a stray dog, then smashing it
with a brick, right between the eyes.
Cooking it on a makeshift grill in the woods,
away from the village communal cafeteria,
so they could eat the most of it,
sucking every bit of meat and marrow,
making a broth of the bones. And after a movie
in an open field one summer night,
walking home alone by starlight,
the Milky Way spread its arms around her.

.

And There Was Crying

.


Tonight, down the block,
a mother was screaming
at her children, slapping them.
Tonight there were so many fireflies in the trees
it looked like Christmas.
You could see stars,
hazy through the humid air.
Like trying to see
with tears in your eyes.

.

The Sound of Water in Sewers

.


He sits in a sweat-stained undershirt
in the living room, after another day
punching holes into steel.
A beer, blue TV light
splattering on the walls.
The only other light
falls from the kitchen
onto the back of his wife,
her hair pressed by pins to her scalp,
as she carries two plates
and sets them on the tray between them.
They eat slowly, faces
going slack, looking at nothing
in particular.

.