A door jumps out from shadows, then jumps away. This is what I've come to find: the back door, unlatched. Tooled by insular wind, it slams and slams without meaning to and without meaning.

To pull the metal splinter from my palm my father recited a story in a low voice. I watched his lovely face and not the blade. Before the story ended, he'd removed the iron sliver I thought I'd die from. I can't remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer. And I recall his hands, two measures of tenderness he laid against my face.

The lyric self is the self; the narrative self is not.

Brimming. That's what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming.

Poetry is the language of extremity. Poetry is a transfer of potency. You feel something potent and then you transfer it onto the page.

People who read poetry have heard about the burning bush, but when you write poetry, you sit inside the burning bush.

We suffer each other to have each other a while.