Judith Skillman Poems

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,
...