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You oughta burn those blankets outside in a barrel, is what the undertakers of that town told us as they were going, because of how he died, though by then blankets were the least of what we’d handled.                                  …

Sun first appears as a spot on the kitchen wall. Then a branch from the back yard breaks in every inch lit by dew. Despite us, hunched shadows, our dust rises sparkling. Quick! The wet negative dries.

Then, he held me there as if stunned, the figure      who had appeared saying           this is the edge between what is and what is not. On one side was the forest in all its complex depth and verdancy,      on the other side stretched the field,  …

I’m tired of silence, its flimsy eloquence, I’m tired of the tawdry quirks of speech (a taste of compromise, a smarmy diligence, a disaffection for what’s not in reach); I’m tired of the exactions of desire, flailing, jockeying to get expressed. I’m tired of sickness, of its cure, tired of restlessness, tired of rest. I’m…

Bone dry river. Red sand where the water once ran. Boulders that     were stepping stones. No cattle. The wind is never gentle here, merely patient—the mesas could     tell you that. The vast fields of scrub grass where nothing     we’ve planted ever takes root. The way the rain floods everything and is gone, is like kindness…

1. Kissinger in black-tie shuffles to the town car idling at the museum complex edge between where the glum Pei pyramid rises and the gardens begin. “Is that—” I say, and “Yes,” says Jim, baby in his arms, me shoving the empty stroller to get home by naptime. Nobody notices, clicking at each other through…

I watched you walking up out of that hole All day it had been raining in that field in Southern Italy rain beating down making puddles in the mud hissing down on rocks from a sky enraged I waited and was patient finally you emerged and were immediately soaked you stared at me without love…