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  • Heather, 1984

    There might have been other reasons Heather and I beat the hell out of each other when we performed in The Miracle Worker in the fall of 1984, but the best I could come up with was that she and I just weren’t able to fake it. Heather and I had been in a few…

  • You Got to the Sea

    for TP The woman down the hall has a girlfriend. When they fell in love the sea was a finger. It pushed them both in the belly. It rubbed their lips. It ran itself up and down their thighs. Then they got married. The sea came to the wedding and ate the shrimp cocktail. Had…

  • One Good King

    Then the Great Dane becamean arrow of smoke in a wind pipe of smoke, so I had to burnthe body. He’d always considered himself king of infinite dominions:king of the bone, king of the living room, king of the elevator, kingof the field. The ashes I scattered in a park close to home, in casethere…

  • Laundry Day

    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…

  • Poem About a Still Life

    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…

  • Arriving at the End

    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…

  • Loitering

    “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…

  • August on the Coast

    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…

  • Days of Being Mild

    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…