Article

  • test

    (A    small,    and    still    isolated,    incident    inNew York shows what can happen if authenticauthority  in social relations has broken downto  the point where  it  cannot work  any  longereven  in its derivative,  purely functional form.A  minor  mishap  in  the  subway  system—thedoors   on   a   train   failed   to   operate—turnedinto  a  serious  shutdown  on  the  line  lastingfour   hours   and   involving   more   than   fiftythousand     passengers     because     when     thetransit   authorities   asked   the   passengers   toleave the defective train, they simply…

  • Zydeco on Dog Hill

    Before they put Cousin Gladys inside the ground in a cornrow of fair-skinned Creole men, I sat in her funeral mass imagining two shadows dancing in the swish of a swift moving blade that slit her dreams in half and sent her father strolling across the cane field like a land-bending river, turning a page…

  • The Complex Sentence

    The kind Italian driver of the bus to Romeinvited her to his house—she was obviouslyhungry—and gave her sandwichesand raped her. All those years ago—she smileswhile telling it—contemptuous,somehowof her younger self, who drags behind her like a can.Grammar is greatbut who will write the sentence that includesthe story of the damage to her soul and how…

  • Tanka Diary

    Along a familiar hiking trail I recognize agave, sage, the summer-blooming yucca, and sticky monkey flower.    * As if they might be learning a new dance, elders plant their feet on steady ground, gathering wind in their arms to move cloud hands.    * Returning home tonight I avoid crushing a snail that casts a scant…

  • Logos

    for Linda Gregg   Safe in the light along the bank Being in believing No name     Only being On the bank radiant and blank Safe watching and seeing    On the brink Of the light    Blank    No blame in being Waiting then breathing in being Seeing Singing    Let my voice   …

  • Transfer Station

    After the death of his wife, Loring began giving away things for free. His sister-in-law worried it was some kind of “suicide thing,” as his brother Bill put it, which only showed how little they knew him. Loring wasn’t suicidal. If anything, in the four months since Gloria died, there was a new kind of…

  • Alan at the Kirschbergs’

    Alan Zimmer had been staying at the Kirschbergs’ for a week when he saw their daughter in the elevator at Brigham and Women’s. She was in a wheelchair. Alan, behind her, recognized the yellow kinks of her hair, and the dark roots that cleaved to her part. He stepped forward. “Jenna! What are you doing…

  • The Martyr’s Motel

    They’d traveled one by oneon their knees beneath the earthto be gathered at the station to be given robes and haloes and official papers. And a bus ticket each to the roadside motelin Ohio that heldthe reservations in their names, where those who’d been slain before them were waiting. Can these be the right martyrs?…