I’m resting on a bench in the cemeterywhile Ned scrawls his self-delighted wild-boy traceover the slopes of grass, but we can’t stay long, since it’s a day I need to go into the city,and when I stand up suddenly my left leg’s half a footlower than my right, because I’ve stepped into the sunken, newly…
The vessel is simple, a rowboat among yachts.No one hides a Tommy gun in its case.No bluesman runs over his uke in a whiskey rage. The last of the Hawai’ian queens translated the namegift that came here, while Portuguese historians translatejumping flea, the way a player’s fingers pick and fly. If you have a cigar…
This endless room is deep blue, dark red.I’m wearing my Valentino gown, vintage silhouettebut hand-stitched for me. It’s the same purpleas my favorite twilight, just as I requested. Everyone is here—I can see across the waythe black-rooted starlets and reality queensdrinking acai Cosmos. And I can see the disgracedcongressman studying his notes at the bar,…
Praise scissors that clip split ends easily as ex- boyfriends. The one who died in college, the refugee who crossed a blood-soaked Nile, but never could get over you. Praise coffee and Kentucky bourbon. Daughters pulled deep into Ohioan corn, romances banished to backseats and barstools, and newlyweds two-stepping to the second line waving paper…
is another thing Nietzsche saidthat hits me as pretty specious,if not entirely untrue,while sitting in my car in the Costcoparking lot, listening to the BalletMécanique of metal buggies shrieking as each super, singular, and self-containedwisdom of this Monday morning rumblesits jumbo packs of toilet paper and Diet Cokeup the sidewalk. So count me a Despiserof…
Out back of the motel, a man and a boy feed alligators in the dark. I can see them past the curtains. Past the paisley curtains and through the cracked and dirty pane of glass, I see them, like shadows, see them and the slow, casting motions they make. I see things leave their hands,…
Did you ever see stars? asked my father with a cackle. He was notspeaking of the heavens, but the white flash in his head when a fist burstbetween his eyes. In Brooklyn, this would cause men and boys to slapthe table with glee; this might be the only heavenly light we’d ever see. I never…
When I hit thirteen, the noun between my legsturning into a verb, my father sat me down and said: one day you will have a wife of your own. A manwill come—a helpful neighbor knocking while you’re at work perhaps, or a garlicky colleagueat an office party, or a lifeguard on a spit of sand—…
Describing her, I say, she’s a Modigliani face-wise but when she walks in her custom-size narrow bootsshe minces, or half-dances like a pony, the sort of pony who is dear and a little sillyand wears a hat with a ribbon. A little of this and a little of that—lacking a territorial integrity, she slides vertiginously…
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