Rick Barot Poems

The worker's pants on a spider-filament line,
strung waist to waist to waist to dry.
The neat green wedge of park, always empty;
...

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
...

I have seen the black sheets laid out like carpets
under the trees, catching the rain
...

Scintillas of the anatomical
on the vines, buds opening—
make me a figure
for the woken.
...

Dusk, thus:
a shirt drops,
the bellybutton rune
showing.
...

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.
...