Poetry

My broker and I watched the markets drop, 
ticker crawling across the bottom of the Bloomberg screen, 
and salvaged what we could,
kept Microsoft, sold AXA, unwound

I descended into the underworld again
in my dream and there for the umpteenth time 
stood my father in a plaid button-down shirt
and khakis a freshly lit pipe a wreath of smoke 

He found me browsing the poetry section of a bookstore.
I remembered his face from my last readings.

He found me browsing the poetry section of a bookstore.
I refused his leaflet. His voice became agitated and loud.

This morning your mouth
Was all I could think about

The martyr is borne
through town on the backs

of believers.
Such a ghost ship!

Storm me.
Send 

me down into the dirt
& dark, raise 

me like thunder up.

Suppose we surprised him coming off the path
into the patch of pines and saw palmettos,
two girls with our child-sized bikes. Suppose
he had a reason to chase us back to the path,
his pale face flushed with—what? Desire? Wrath? 

Turner, a celebrity chef, wrote Brian Turner’s
Favourite British Recipes: Classic Dishes
from Yorkshire Pudding to Spotted Dick. He played 
drums for the horror-punk band Schoolyard Heroes,
played hockey for New Zealand in the sixties, lifted
th...

When his beloved Sophie died, Novalis 
Lay by her grave and wept himself to sleep.
On the third night she met him in a dream.
He woke transformed, longing for the last trance,
“When sleep shall be without waking.”