I found my way back by grief scent and smoke to the daughter’s voice from the father’s mouth. This time you asked that I step outside my body though not far enough to fall into the abyss of night or near the flames that ringed the bed. I couldn’t say, “Go away” because the dead…
What ghost threw my hand across my face? He roamed my sleep in that room dark under pines. Another cried softly for an hour, till comforted. Lakes, mansion, woods, studios— all of it loss and the love of art. Mornings I’d stare at an old story: the touring car draped in a tarp,…
Since you ask: In the walls Of my country lie buried Patrons of the arts; In the floors are prisoners Who stole bread. The sky So close—or I am tall— I have to duck. My wide Cravats flutter In my face. I’m sorry, This is a love letter With a touch of a limp. I…
after the Gawain poet Like Jonas by the fish was I received by it, swung and swept in the dark waters, driven to the deeps by it and beyond many rocks; the winds on the one water wrestled together. Without any touching of its teeth I tumbled into it and without more struggle than a…
No waste of shame, no wilting of the flower, the stick shall not break, the bat shall not splinter, no friend will wake, no end of winter; nor remembrance of splendor to counter the paper bull’s power will cover the lake with ice when gamblers spill the dice: the mirror shall not tilt, the quick…
I’d read the book before but when the building blew up I found myself drawn in again. I knew the wife would yell, “Oh,” as her husband fell. There would be the blackness of the night and the way the world becomes a gray swirl before our eyes. I picked up a section of orange…
Cavernous, unpeopled, the theater is empty, but its silence pleases him. He wants to mull his former life over, as water would, until it becomes pure, simple, & smooth—an oval of white quartz in the river’s bed of sand & stones. As a child he had collected such stones, but their luster always seemed to…
translated by Ralph Angel to Manuel Torres, “Niño de Jerez,” who has the body of a Pharaoh Portrait of Silverio Franconetti Between Italian and flamenco, how would that Silverio have sung? The thick honey of Italy, mixed with our lemon, flowed through the deep wail of his siguiriya. His cry was terrifying. The old folk…
If description could outpace effusions of feeling, serif or sans serif, punctuated with dashes and in Amherst, could one say it was a peculiar summer. I tried to like what I’d always liked and tried to get there sooner rather than later. I’d forgotten I liked orange until on a scale of one to ten…
No products in the cart.