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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…

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 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…

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…

A good hard slap to the middle of my head. Three blackbirds sing in a red cage, three last filaments of thought that will probably snap. Their chatter rouses the gold-painted saint cross-legged near my bed. Something larger’s visible edge. I hesitate to reach out; then it comes to me that it is mine as…

he pours whiskey on time making a home in sleep one wall is enough for his back yesterday’s paper makes for a ceiling life is postponed for now but the ghosts still roaming his past are always on time panting every moment is an open grave a window to be shut he quarrels with the…

my father said, when Jacob enters the tent, until it is accomplished. I did not believe it would be accomplished. What thief does not know trickery when it comes courting, hands full of daughters, and sheep, and savoury meat? Yet he came into the tent in the dark, full of intention and heat. My body…