Rick Barot Poems

When my sister got her diagnosis,
I bought an airplane ticket
but to another city, where I stared
at paintings that seemed victorious
...

And what part of his reflection will tell me who I am,
that I am standing a little away, wanting in on his story?
...

It turns out there's a difference between a detail
and an image. If the dandelion on the sidewalk is
mere detail, the dandelion inked on a friend's bicep
is an image because it moves when her body does,
...

The boulder that is bigger than a house,
perched on the edge of another boulder, painted gold
and prayed to by monks in saffron robes.
...

I think about the mornings it saved me
to look at the hearts penknifed on the windows
of the bus, or at the initials scratched
...

It is something to be thus saved,
a point on which the landscape
comes to a deep rest.
...

Would lightning do? Would a new watch?
There aren't going to be any plums, red
ones or green ones. My white shirt is dirty.
...

Why does it mean
anything that the girl
...

Because I was equipped with memory,
the cane fields are still burning somewhere,
the smoke boiling gold and gray.
...

It is not always joy
that is announced to you
in the mundane light.
Not always a wing
...