Article

  • “Before this dream…”

    Before this dream there is a blue dress, a tangle of trees and the distance between voices. There is routine sorting of like things: bank statements, unopened letters, photographs turned inward from     the damp.There are cows in clusters, truck stops, cinder block churches, scattered     tractors and fields cleared and flooded. Before this dream there is a scored…

  • Penance

    I offer upthis flowerbox my skull dear whomeverlet its luxuriance exceed its basenesslet me curl in the blueblackroot hairs and wait for youwind in my teeth will sough sweetly

  • Waiting at the River

    Sometimes, I’m tired of being a mother, weary of holding her in my mind, her words brighter than mine, the light’s movement on the rock. Look, I say, Listen, to what my daughter said. (tired of being) reasonable and calm, answering to Mom and how sweet (the sound) my name in her mouth, her mouth…

  • “A Field of Dry Grass”

    Osaka   Hard to imagine Basho died here in a rented room above a flower shop in 1694, as I pause today on Dotonbori Street, shoppers brushing past on either side, to gaze at the giant red mechanical crab stretching its legs over the door of the Kani Doraku seafood restaurant, its eye stalks rotating…

  • The Suspect

    On a factory floor I felt for my keys. It was eight o’clock by the clock on the stall. (I meant to write wall) The tiles were one foot by one foot and sea foam green spoke the little shroud over the letters above the drill room door. Once it was useful to think of…

  • Why I Write Poetry

    Because my son is as old as the stars Because I have no blessings Because I hold tangerines like orange tennis balls Because I sit alone and welcome morning across              the unshaved jaws of my lawn Because the houses on my street sleep like turtles Because the proper weight of beauty was her eyes              last…

  • About Alice Hoffman

    “When I went to a movie set for the first time, I felt that the person I was most like was the set designer,” Alice Hoffman tells me as we sit in a room whose centerpiece is a vivid bouquet of the same tea roses that bloom in the yard beyond the window behind her….

  • The Blowjob Whale

    We thought we were onto something new. We loved doing it in the out-of-doors, thought ourselves pioneers: the first to sneak off into the darkness, unzip the fly, to feel a breeze on the back of our necks, to open our mouths, our hearts, his heart. We were partial to certain places: the park, the…