Explore Poems: Architecture & Design

Welcome to the Immanent Foundation.
Our headquarters are located in a large house
on a hill above the beach. Our headquarters
are located on a large estate in a forest of oak
and beech. This estate is called Arcady,
or the Memory Palace. After the...

Notice the theme of floating, our volunteer guide says, pointing to the light gray exterior walls. We take out our phones to capture the weeping European beech—the first of its kind I’ve seen—dangling dark papery leaves in cascading caves to...

Nearly asleep again in my arms after hunger
woke her in the middle of the night,
my daughter discovers her hands and, dazed,
studies the small movements they can make,
amazed to find they’re hers to manipulate.
Years ago, on a hot afternoon in Agra,
our...

The hotel showers were splendidly profligate.
The aqueduct that fed the big
fountains down the street probably ran underneath
my bed, giving the water pressure
a nice bump. These were veritable circuses of water:
crowds pleased to see, qua
the wonders of  Roman hydraulic engineering,
water shatter...

These are all ancient names of what you will once call home.


The shape of the fire altar is independent of time.


Each temple is an offering made to the gods
by giving them a home.


An inward realization can only be achieved
by draining...

1. what the chicago window was for

mainly light.

      the supporting function
on the sides      opens to let in
      air.      the proportion
wall to door   dependent on heat.

      repeated upward
into cold   ...

Impatient as we were for all of them to join us,
The land had not yet risen into view: gulls had swept the gray steel towers away
So that it profited less to go searching, away over the humming earth
Than to stay...

Sewn straw, exact pattern. Fields of rice-sprigs
evenly set, a mile of herringbone tweed.
The town, a sea of gunmetal, fish-scale tiles.
 
By morning each floor a casserole of pillows,
coverlets, comforters, towels:    flown nests. Imprint
of bodies, fading. They fold the beds away,
the room...

Where moonlight angles
                  through the east-west streets,
down among the old
                  for America
tall buildings that changed
                  the streets of other
cities circulate
                  elevated trains
overhead shrieking
                  and drumming, lit by
explosions of sparks
                  that harm no one and
the shadowed persons
                  walking underneath
the erratic waves
                 ...

The jay streaks through the lilacs
                        in color clash.
I note down: Invent
            outdoor birdswing
                                                            so birds...

I place a black cloth the size of a dot over his head. Wrap his entire miniscule body
with a thread of my black hair. He lies there on a white sheet of paper and squirms like
a dark cocoon, thinks he...

A sound-loop hangs from the white gallows of the page:
                                                
               ...

Stairs & rites
not for the foot

The building
thinks

Angular rock

Green skyscraper

Black ziggurat

Miniature
of time

Made
into altar

Invention
of the night

Sprouting
at dawn

Carved rock
praying
as it buds

Seeking the seed
to sprout!

Saliva
in torrents

Cooling waterfall

You redeem your field

Salt head

Stream
of lights

Double reflection

Stone
& water

The same
sprouting
 

Under diagram                                  of a letter-less paragraph,


block white.       Silent quadrates,          grid              ...

          1

About can mean near
or nearly.

A book can be about something

or I can be about
to do a thing
and then refrain.

To refrain is to stop yourself.

A refrain
is a repeated phrase.

           2

This table is...

Along a derelict railroad, abandoned machinery takes
      its last tour of duty toward rust. Another town is stalling.  
Another house smolders with rot while a television rages. 
     Crows patrol banked cinders beside a landfill with a sign:
No...

Seaside, and the fragment of one running—
calves, ribs, green eyes into water.
There he goes. Waves. Buoying up
as into sky. And the seagulls fly,
seeing it as relief, a story. Once

they were there, two on a white blanket.
The circumference of a shadow.
Sunlight...

From a distance, at night, they seem to be

industries—all lit up but not on the map;

or, in this scientific age, they could be

installations for launching rocket ships—

so solid, and with such security, are they. . .

Ah, but up close, by...

How tired are you? How benevolent the cause

for those slim, aching moments of blinding obscurity,
and the blinds drawn and the sunlight louvered
until even the knickknacks cling to their dust as to Time
passing passing, if even that. The yearning
to be not...