Without Title
Translated from the Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval The blue sky remainedEverything else No
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The Slight
The Sahara it is not. At night, the little tourist caravan arrives at a wave of dunes cresting beneath the starry sky. But during the day, they carry on through splotches of the unvaried scrub that is Rajasthan’s Thar. Trees are occasional, of a variety that gives the camels gas and causes them to slobber…
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Worlds Out of Worlds: A Look2 Essay on Robert Duncan
Early in his career, Robert Duncan introduced himself to two editors by writing, “all that I aspire to do is communicate somehow my psychic experiences—as the young druid poets and those who wore the cloak of blue feathers in Ireland and all poets must do.” In comparison, contemporary cover letters seem positively self-effacing. On trips…
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Blame Game
Pin the ozone layer on me: I drove my Hummer into the skywhen I gunned through a red light.I hit outer space; I clearly went too far. It’s hard to tweeze apart a holefrom the everyday emptiness of air. Hard to touch upon a hole & not sailright through. One day or another every iceberg…
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Before Letting Go
She doesn’t know which aspect of the piece makes her want to become part of the space of the room—the midnight safety of the gathered sheet, pulled up at one corner to protect, to comfort, to block the light so white, to be sucked on around saliva-wet fingers, to hide; or the white light of…
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Please and Thank You
Say no now and you will get off easy. Maybe.The firebrand in your heart is only a rental,Just a spent ember with nothing left to doThan plead guilty, not no contest. Now go,Go to your room and gawk, or else text-messageYourself, write runes, or if the rhinencephalonIn your boiling brain dictates, write filth,Stinky warm-ups for…
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Jealousy
Colette published this exploration of jealousy around the time she separated from her lover Missy, the Marquise de Belbeuf (1862-1945). It was first printed February 22, 1912, in Le Matin, a newspaper edited by her soon-to-be second husband, Henri de Jouvenel (1876-1935). I’m chewing on a sprig of bitter herb that makes my saliva…
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The Sacred Harp Book
If I get religious for a minute, it will be to keep termswith the bewildered caul of being thirteen, surrounded by the dead. What used topeek through the roof, never so much stroking string things and eating afterlifebiscuits, as making sound like a wonky piano dragging its broken leg in an interminable circleof Sundays. I…
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New Brother
My father was alone when he picked me up, which I found deeply disappointing. He explained that his new VW station wagon was tiny and Ernest was tall for fourteen—too tall to fit with my luggage in the back seat. I’d never had a brother before and I’d never been to South Africa before. The…