If you're tired and you're sick of the city
Remember that it's just a flower
made out of clay


Jenny Holzer, Living: With Bleeding Inside the Head, 1980-1982


Surreptitious Kissing
-- by Denis Johnson

I want to say that
forgiveness keeps on

dividing, that hope
gives issue to hope,

and more, but of course I
am saying what is

said when in this dark
hallway one encounters

you, and paws and
assaults you—love

affairs, fast lies—and you
say it back and we

blunder deeper, as would
any pair of loosed

marionettess, any couple
of cadavers cut lately

from the scaffold,
in the secluded hallways

of whatever is
holding us up now.


Devotio Moderna
-- by Graham Foust

Who but us
could know wisdom's cut,

the pain of pain's
leaving, same as you?

Who would smooth us to
a circle? You would. You would.

You and your planet. You
and your fragrant blue room.


for no clear reason
-- by Robert Creeley

I dreamt last night
the fright was over, that
the dust came, and then the water,
and the women and men, together
again, and all was quiet
in the dim moon's light.

a paean of such patience --
laughing, laughing at me,
and the days extend over
the earth's great cover,
grass, trees, and flower-
ing season, for no clear reason.