Judith Skillman

Tasted, smelled, rising from hot asphalt, sweet rain
in the street where a man works on his camper in the rain.

Like desire, felt less often now we are old, the joint pain
...

To scissor the palm from an azure sky
men come, holding blades, unlikely
Machete taken from a drug lord whose luck
Fell when the tunnel entrance,
...

'L'heure vert' in French equals, roughly, Happy Hour

One to go and workday's finished,
smudged like droplets against
the window. Who else craves anise-
...

Like pain it came and left by halves
and now mostly it stays on,
a boarder too poor to leave.
...

Too much to ascribe
to the heavy air
circulating false tropics,
yet more comers
...

Our dark bird of symbolism, our caw caw.
Where does the train of thoughts go?
In what order, and is the river of Lethe
above or below the earth? What about heaven -
...

Mid-March, the black and white of winter goes on pouring
images upon the window- a surface for rivulets of down pour.

Those whose lives we tend to ravish come and go of their own accord.
...

The crescent moon climbs into its dark circle.
From the white lilac, shoots curl, dark circles.

The sun sets due west. We watch the Olympics.
In the saddle there, once we came full circle
...

Out of my finger in dream
holding the head in my right hand
feeling the pain the shaft
beneath layers it hurts to bend
...

Never the children we wanted to be, we ran away, sat on porches, hobos holding sticks with makeshift bags attached. Unable to stop the arguments, we left,
...

Those who romanticize morning
hear it only at dawn.

The ones who suspect foods of poison
...

How heavily it sits on one—
the chewing of the cud,
the pastoral.
...

Always rushing, dressed for business—
the bobbing hats,
the one by one and across the street
as if it were
...

I only knew him
as a traveling salesman.
At times he came
into the hotel
...

In the kitchen
I have water, bells, a candle.
I have a man in the living room
reading from a screen
he holds in his hand.
...

These the last before colony collapse
sip as when I am no one
and the Romantic era descends with dusk.
...

from Kafka's Conversation Slips

You must understand, for the time being,
that I am without flowers. The Viburnum
...

Nation of water and excess,
each droplet another source
of loss and discontent.
Or else what music calls
...

Come around corners, towards you,
without intent. You are the figure the women
draw in a dark room, lights at their easels
casting halos. Their scrutiny does not equal
...

That's Kafka's father there,
crashing through the door.
Pausing in a soft light
to consider the fragility
...