David Dalton Yezzi Poems

The only time I've been to Switzerland
was early one spring on a train through the mountains.
There was a lake—I guess it was Lucerne?
Above me cliff tops ridged with snow fanned out
...

I see you once I've got you down to size:
a two-day-stubble squatter; jailbait eyes;

the bottle-headed trophy mom; the mentor
...

Paper creased is
with a touch
made less by half,
reduced as much
...

Hard to reach, so you yank your clothes
getting at it—the button at your neck,
the knotted shoe. You snake your fingers in
until your nails possess the patch of skin
...

I don't say things I don't want to say
or chew the fat with fat cats just because.

With favor-givers who want favors back,
I tend to pass on going for the ask.
...

This guy I know, a rabbi, Friday nights,
on his way home before sunset in winter,
always stops at a florist or bodega
and buys a bunch of flowers for his wife.
...

There are days I don't think about the sea;
weeks wash by in fact,
then a shearwater—or some such—flutters by
on the salt flats fanning out in my mind's eye,
...

A friend calls, so I ask him to stop by.
We sip old Scotch, the good stuff, order in,
some Indian—no frills too fine for him
or me, particularly since it's been
...

The water off these rocks is green and cold.
The sandless coast takes the tide in its mouth,
as a wolf brings down a deer or lifts its child.
...