Author's Reading (requires RealPlayer)

Manhattan is a gumbo bowl
or a wet dark train-set world I never had.
The opera is a cup of red velvet milk.
Orchestra is a ringing word you don't hear enough.
Being transient is rarely relevant,
don't let it snag you.
I finished a book of poems, a raspberry swallow.
The last four years are an envelope
filled with scraps of phone numbers and "to do" lists,
but they are also infinitely small fibers wound
into a thick untouchable band.
Writing is a drill sergeant in a windstorm
on top of damp hills yelling various instructions
I can't hear or understand where each one ends.

(originally published in Verse, Spring 1997).