We live in a time of extraordinary literary riches. I believe that contemporary literature—both our poetry and our fiction—is not only healthy, but thriving. I believe the work of many of my contemporaries has been remarkably innovative, startlingly powerful, and deeply compelling. I believe that the greatest strength of American literature has been, at its…
Maybe it had been raining for years. By the second night, it was easy to feel that way. They had come to this spot, in the heart of Panama, two days ago, and even then it had been raining. There was no sign of respite. It was as if they had come to a different…
Reagan dead this Saturday the last— the falsifying mind cratered, the brain that was a salt block America loved to lick— but Ray Charles struck down yesterday outlasts him by three days forever now— the basic blues chord a power of the arisen— to the Lord’s child betrayed by lightless waves…
Swallows, phoebes, flycatchers, chickadees, warblers, and some terns and sparrows are less than an ounce, and are so little of water, more hollow than bone, though of substance in boughs and leaves, where they perch and fly, for how little they want of what matters, bright and unmistakable—aspiring, disappearing—not of who they are but of…
What happened of course was nothing extraordinary except for the bracelet she found in her mailbox—a breakfast of flat red stones, the painted smash of a river bottom. The river, she liked to imagine, in Africa, in Tanzania, in Dar es Salaam. The Rufiji, perhaps, for she is touching a map now and dreaming of…
Now I see it: a few years To play around while being Bossed around By the taller ones, the ones With the money And more muscle, however Tender or indifferent They might be at being Parents; then off to school And the years of struggle With authority while learning Violent gobs of things one didn’t…
She is unnaturally educated. Can take a word, crosshair it into place and begin its trajectory toward l’ancien. Greek, Latin, hieroglyphics. Whatness is concerned with content. So many private horrors stink of kerosene, bloodsport. Whereness is concerned with linkages. We begin almost demented by the Big Bang accuracy of metaphor. And the Word was ….
Stoned in the canned jangle of steel drum tunes in the faux Tiki bar, I sit below dusty plastic fronds and nurse my drink. A few stools down, too precious for words, a tongue-studded, nose-ringed, lesbian couple, heads bowed close, whisper secrets and softly laugh. I want their love to last. I order a plate…
There was a time when I watched it happen. Strangers pressed to other strangers in one bed, clothes on, air humid with the cloying scent of fruit juice and vodka: none of us giving in to another and yet unwilling to leave the scene of that possibility, pretending to sleep, actually sleeping. Then waking again…
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