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…
“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…
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.
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…
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…
Count they teach me so I count I count to ten I count to a hundred a thousand then I’m taught math I add subtract multiply just as I’m told but they never let on I’d still now be obsessively trying to calculate how to make things make sense I’ve lived for instance as of…
Ed is retired. Lucky Ed. He sits around and drinks his beer. He snores. There’s nothing in his head. Ed is retired. Lucky Ed, his wife thinks. I’ll go out instead of killing him if I stay here. Ed is retired. Lucky Ed. The TV blares. He drinks his beer. Sid is a workaholic. He…
Your first motherless day found you in the pines photographing pink legs of an elusive hermit thrush you tracked by ear to a twig that didn’t tip, so empty were the hollow bones at the marrow of song. The phone pealing at home startled your dog awake. It rang and rang, territorial. The hours you…
Each summer when I’m in Krakow, I make weekly trips to a flea market close to our apartment. This particular market also sells antiques, but it doesn’t aspire to a loftier name, because it also peddles secondhand books, last year’s issues of fashion magazines, handmade jewelry, items that aren’t old in the sense that antiques…
No products in the cart.