All one needs to belong to the company Of the truly grateful is to feel grateful, Just as I felt when, retrieving a sock This afternoon from behind the dryer, I found the book you lent me Four years ago, two years before your heirs Sold off your library. Did you ever wonder What had…
A poem about “Still Life with Fruit,Wine, Glasses, and a Bowl of Cherries,” by Hendrik van Streek, can’t stay in the painting for longunless it takes a closer look at the blue bowl holding the cherriesand wonders, as the wall label wonders,whether that’s Chinese porcelainshipped to Europe by the Dutch East India Company,or tin-glazed earthenwarefired…
The Tartars say: After the wedding, we don’t need the music. And in Yiddish it is said: It’s the last one whom the dogs attack. The Italians say: The last to arrive must shut the door. The English say: The last suitor wins the maid. They also say: No one has ever seen tomorrow. Spaniards…
“No Loitering” reads the sign by the school.But what about a school that offers coursesIn loitering as an art, each class designedTo break another link in the argumentThat we ought to be somewhere else by nightfall,Ought to start now if we’re to arrive on timeFor the meeting of those in need of a truthWe’ve distilled…
The child imitating a dragonflyzoomed into the dusty elmsand came back a child. The child mocking a fireflylit and went outuntil he was invisible. In honor of nightthe child closed his eyes. The child pretending to be a childburned to grow old, soon he weptin dry coughs. Always the wind like a comb in your…
It takes real skill to speed down the packed streets of Zhongguancun, but the singer with the mohawk is handling it like a pro. His asymmetrical spikes are poking the roof of his dad’s sedan, so he’s compensating by tilting his head slightly to the left. We are meeting with a new band to talk…
for the Wu Tang Clan and 1992 Shaolin’s flowers, imperial and ready for slaughter. Bobby Digital wears the wings of the only saint he knows. Come blessed angel with your skull-cup of blood. Enter this chamber with your black sword and a streetcar full of flagging desire. When the children ask for water, give…
By the end of her thirties, Patricia Hampl had published two poetry collections and a critically acclaimed memoir. When a radio interviewer asked her what was next, she replied airily, “I have it in mind to work on fiction from now on.” What happened in the following years just goes to show that writers are…
1. According to the Talmud, only three sins in Jewish law are so serious they are forbidden under any circumstances, even to save a life. These are murder, idol worship, and adultery. But in many interpretations, there is a fourth sin, equal to, if not worse than, these: lashon hara—literally, “evil tongue.” It is said…
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