Blood Prism

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments ix I. Memory Trees We Thought Were Walking 3 Amish Roadway 5 Behind Clouds 6 Painting of Dunes, Left to Right 7 Loss 8 Walking at Night 9 Weathered Crèche 11 Imprint 12 On the Demise of the Poetic Apostrophe 14 On Top of Central High School in the Middle of the Night 15 No Elegy 16 Landscape with a Lake and Small Island 17 At Lourdes 18 Swimming after Nightfall 19 Something of My Mother’s 20 Manchild 21 The Last Time I Saw Him I Didn’t 22 Lamp and Wick 24 The Night You Thought to Stop 25 Shadow 27 The Other Biography 28 Sunburst, Rush Hour 29 II. Politics Shapes as Prologue in the Tower of London 33 Hatred: On Returning to a Poem with Language Backwards 34 The Trickle of Blood 36 Teens 37 “Long War” Drone: On a Term Proposed and Abandoned by the Pentagon 38 The First of the Month 40 viii Drought in August 41 Smoke Love 42 Paradise 44 Cooling Tower, Smokestack 45 Wartime Portrait, Dried Sunflowers 46 High Waves 47 Blood Gutter 48 Referred Pain 49 On Sound: As Sirens in The Diary of Anne Frank 51 Some of Us 53 Reading Tracks in Snow 54 Wrought Iron Grapes and Leaves 55 On Reading War and Peace 56 Lake Fogged In 58 Abundance 59 Saint Ophelia 60 III. Age Dispatch 63 Cloak 64 Ghost Pain 65 After AA, the Somnambulist Dream Again 66 Recovery 67 Mist 68 Path in Sand, with Hawthorn 69 Walking on Water 70 Torch 71 On Translucence 72 An Ordinary Day not Red 73 Terrestrial 74 Not the Quick 75 Ash 76 Lullaby 77 Shore As Body 78 Ink Drawing 79 All Souls’ Morning 80 On Plato in December after Dark 81 Stippling, Winter: Letter to a Tropical Mind 82 No Postcard from a Snowfield 84 After White-Out 86 ...