Author's Reading (requires RealPlayer)

My mind can move faster than empires
with more to show.

Some things are confusing like time or logic, some simple as wheat;
all too large to be consumed.

Some can trick you with their size, convince you that wide hours
must be crossed to consider their depth.

Consider the art of making bombs, the amount of stuff in a "tad,"
the bitter twang of coffee, before the elevator opens.

Think of how acorns hold embryos of titan oaks
soon to outstretch their green palms.

An Alp can be collapsed in the space of a subway sigh.
A textbook of women's smiles glints as you pass the highway exit in the
dark.

Inside the sticky palm of one thought
can fit Vietnam, spring's adrenaline gush,

an aunt's life throttled young, the history of prosody,
and dinner to come, Mexican or Italian.

Mexico and Italy, burnt clay in each, such different art,
adobe or stone balcony, Aztec or Tuscany.

See?

(originally published in Brooklyn Review 1996)