a father has lost his son. He circles shoe racks, lingerie, dressing rooms, calling out “Marco!…Marco!…” We all want to help, but it’s justtoo much: Oh, the tragedy of namingthen losing a son named Marco—born to love and to wander, whole head submerged in the starched cup of an outsized Playtex bra, divingback between a…
In the Plan B essay series, writers discuss their contingency plans, extraliterary passions, and the roads not traveled. As a student in Tokyo in the 1980s I would often go to the local Shinto shrine just to listen to the quiet. Small and undistinguished, a gap between concrete commercial buildings, the shrine was…
This practical kid, bornCapricorn, actuary of the stars, he’s planning my death,sure of the thermodynamic heaven he’s invented. Because energymust go somewhere in this system, in his I’ll be repurposed as a tree.And this comforts me, as no discount coupons for paradise ever could.Finally fitting, I’ll meet my zero as the absolute, container of soot…
O tulip, tulip, you bloom all day and later sway a deep-waisted limbo above the dinner table, waiting for a coin to drop into your well,for the stars to pin your stem to their lapel. Soon, on ocean winds, dawn cries its devotion, our world entranced once more into being.Let go your sumptuous rage, darling.All…
I walk uptown with a letter in my head, past the piers and thelanguishing seals, the spiral of a spring day, landmark, harbor, inletand bay; the ocean into more ocean, the gray of a gray sky. Dear God.Dear Absentee Landlord Who Collects the Checks. Dear BarbershopGlass and Barbicide Blue. Dear Recession and War and Empire…
The Look2 essay series, which replaces our print book reviews, takes a closer look at the careers of accomplished authors who have yet to receive the full appreciation that their work deserves. Reviews of new books can still be found on our blog at http://pshares.org. Devastating partings—man from woman, person from place—haunt the…
1. Know your origin: you are a tokenof the afterwards of love. What flinchesin the ribbon of your utterly new bloodis nothing but the echo of a bed post—pulse. You have grown up. From filamentwithin your mother’s bulb, you have evolvedinto a chandelier of bones, weightlesslyorbiting your portion of the womb, aglowin skin that holds you…
All winter the ghosts were waitingfor a new high-school teacher who refused to appear, and so youwere roped in. February had the year on pause, the dayslike holes that tripped you over and over in the frozen yard. You hadno knowledge of history or chemistry yet were expected to teachthe dead from a colorful textbook,…
In this borrowed house I keep my doors unlocked. A day in the middleof days where if not for worry I’d be alone. I’m cold as vodka. I dressmyself back to warmth. Two dogs curl asleep downstairs. One gets upto align an invisible orbit then falls, graceless thud against hardwood.O marriage of longing to action!…
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