Last Bender

THE MACHINE WILL NOT STOP
lifting nor the light
wilt new things
the crank case full of speed
is black with grease
jaw piston locked
to the street
restless reconnaissance
menu magazine disk
fish tank stocked
with bug eye bloats
dayglo dorsals on the beat
it will not stop
though dry gears squeak
and bolts rattle loose
it turns till it grinds
out spurs and burns out
blind governors
fly wheels fiddle
while it [...]

Jackson’s Hole
The murdered woman is a muse
Whom Jackson sees above the sound
And hears in footsteps on the floor
Of sand below and sand above
The treetops beat the ground
But Jackson won’t mind the wind
He has to go tonight his tune
Like a drowned man’s croaked
By crows and jays through empty
Plazas, blocks of granite, planes
Of glass, steel stockades, majestic
Jokes [...]

Frank O’Hara was not the first poet I read, but he was the first poet i read whom I felt was speaking directly to me in and through a world I knew intimately and in a language I knew how to speak. I didn’t need to analyze, translate or interpret what he was saying; he [...]

Now that I’ve finished Endangered Species I can begin to read a little fiction again. Since my early twenties I’ve avoided fiction while writing stories because I am such a language sponge. Great stylists are deadly to me. Josh used to quote Joyce Carol Oates at me. It’s like getting hit over the head with [...]