Suppose there was an app that let you know
Before you ordered at Ye Old Clam Shack
The scallops with their flesh as white as snow,
The blushing salmon or the wild-caught hake,
The bass just lifted from a nearby lake,
If they’d been harvested sustainably . . .
Published in LITERARY MATTERS
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On the Coming Extinctions
The phone was ringing and to make it stop
He answered it. Not what you might expect:
“It wasn’t nobody,” announced the cop.
Friends of his said that Kees seemed full of hope
Two days before: did none of them suspect?
The phone kept ringing and it wouldn’t stop . . .
Published in THINK Journal
We lived in an apartment on the ridge
Running along Manhattan’s northwest side,
On a street between the Cloisters and the Bridge . . .
Published in The Hudson Review, reprinted by permission in the Syracuse Post-Standard on Sept 11, 2011.
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After 9/11
Unyielding surface of preconscious mind
And childhood presence, present ever since,
Your monolithic slab still represents
Whatever I can never get behind.
Unyielding? Yes, but never unforgiving!—
Go back a bit: for thirty years and more,
I found you waiting for me by the door
Of all the rooms in which I’ve earned my living . . .
Published in Southwest Review
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To the Blackboard
Victorian mothers instructed their daughters, ahem,
That whenever their husbands were getting it off on them,
The only thing for it was just to lie perfectly flat
And try to imagine themselves out buying a new hat . . .
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Victoria’s Secret
In the Palace of the President this morning,
The General is gripped by the suspicion
That those who were disappeared will be returning
In a subversive act of resurrection . . .
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Easter Sunday 1985
Published in Boulevard
Tired of earth, they dwindled on their hill,
Watching and waiting in the moonlight until
The aspens' leaves quite suddenly grew still,
No longer quaking as the disc descended,
That glowing wheel of lights whose coming ended
All waiting and watching. When it landed . . .
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