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  • Burial

    The body is at home in time and space and loves things, how they come and go, and such distances as it might cross or place between the things it loves, and its own touch. But for you, soul, whom the body bred in error like some weird pearl, everything is wrong. Space is stone,…

  • Catcher’s Hang

    Diane stands on the bar of the trapeze, pacing and gesturing nonchalantly as a professor lecturing on the ground might. We stand in a circle at her feet, self-conscious in our leotards. We look up hopefully, with awe…we are hoping that she can teach us to fly too. I suspect that as little girls we…

  • Late Summer

    Wild mint at our door, honeysuckle, fragrant August wind shifting, dying—nectar, salt, all one breath. Dragonflies mating in the greeny shade of the tamarisk, their brief lives unfettered. On the shore tiny green-black mites, terns— and the calligraphic beach grasses yearning with the breeze like a printmaker’s lines. Sand-washed, sun-warmed fragments—“sea glass”: wines tossed—when?—from a…

  • Lush Life

    Sure, there was the giant knife, and the quick, fat slice of cake in his right hand, but what always surprised me was the night into which he stole. Hard and purring. Luminous and thick. It seemed not a real place— pines and bluffs and crashing waves as if it were a symptom of his…

  • Dojo

    From Years Ago, a memoir Tory Fukada showed me how to crank the corners and I practiced, abandoning the graceful strokes of cursive she’d also taught for the bold design, which seemed meant to be carved but smoldered like a brand. Dozens whirled like pinwheels on the barbed-wire page. I loved the prickly maze, the…

  • Bottle

    “If god is everywhere then he is also in this bottle.” —Ben Vautier How unlucky that god would lie low for so long in a fluxus gallery in St. Louis. Maybe not. Maybe we’ve overlooked holy rubbish everywhere, sacred cans and cartons in trash cans worldwide all being pecked at and treasured by animals who…

  • Rule 2

    I know what hills in the distance can do to a boy: they can make him think hills in the distance for the rest of his life. The best thing for you would be to keep your eyes closed at all times, looking for a way out.

  • Turning Points

    A map unfolds into a world where new poems, new ways of writing them, a new way of living, become possible. My turning points have included the discovery of the city of Istanbul, where I spend a few weeks every year, and my eventual immigration to Ireland, where I now live. With an accent instantly…

  • Two Ways to Play Shylock (David Suchet and Patrick Stewart, Royal Shakespeare Company)

    David plays him as a Yid with an accent and a stoop. To Patrick he’s the ur-outsider aping the locals. He wants what translates in Italian— money more than a child whose Christian not Hebrew name’s the Tiffany of 1580. Trading her mother’s ring, she makes Dad’s marriage look as legit as a monkey’s. Hire…