Here was my Wednesday ten o’clock: Robert James Coates, according to the file on my desk. But he refused to answer to that name, and at our first meeting, after the guard left us alone, insisted I call him Dog, which naturally I wouldn’t do. “All right, then, whatever, call me D,” he said agreeably,…
El Negro de Banyoles tugged the hem of his orange loincloth to save Europe from shame. Storm clouds darkened the gallery skylights. Bruegel’s blind man led a parade of blind men into a ditch as a student sketched a copy at her easel. After the war, Vietnamese beat cradles, tools, and kettles from spent artillery…
So thin, the life we had— sometimes I could see inside my stomach and inside my sister’s the attacks started we were sitting in the corner of the living room away from the chandelier, my mom didn’t want us to sit under it when we were under attack my sister and I her doll and…
These two satisfied towns gaze at each other like old flames across Mobile Bay—handsome, hidebound Mobile with its lawyers and its cemeteries, and blithe Fairhope, pretty Fairhope, with its galleries and boutiques, Point Clear draped along the eastern shore like a string of pearls. Used to be, the right kind of Mobile family escaped to…
Yep. She fell running across the open space. It wasn’t her fault. It’s just One more thing that happened. Knee bleeding, She wouldn’t get picked for the team. None of us understood, of course. We stood there, looking and looking. I’ve read that in this earth we bring forth wind As if soughing, that we…
At the funeral for the young man I’m trying to sing the complicated song And I’m running out of breath there are too many Changes in direction in this song— some parts Are just for the choir they sound great up above in their loft Then the men sing and that’s surprising— the women Are…
In the church, midweek at noon, there is a middle distance between the piercing blue window of pure belief and the bone vault housing my heart’s disbelief, a dim yielding distance related to my prayer: another day’s delay before you are nowhere— for death fixes all distances like a new nail.
When Megan first moved to London, she lived in the top of a house at the top of Brixton Hill that seemed to her, all fresh and green and hopeful as she was, the very best place in the city. She had been staying in a thieves’ hostel near Victoria while she was looking for…
Near the end of the course, in that part of the hour Reserved for questions, a silence fell on the class When the girl who’d been quiet all semester Raised her hand to ask if anyone there besides her Believed in heaven. An embarrassed silence While each of us wondered why she hadn’t chosen To…
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