I squeezed the trigger, and another steel beer can wobbled off the fence post with the dull ping of a shiny copper BB. Cocking the gun again, I heard Monkey Tail and Cookie far off. Their sounds came at me slowly, in waves, like an echo. That meant Lonny was on his way. When you…
Poland, 1920 In darkness they at last reach the bridge at B—, which the retreating Poles in their fury have dynamited. Undaunted, the division commander consults his maps by lamplight and gives the order: "We will wade across." Horses, creaking carts, tachankas—the long column streams down the bank and plunges headlong into the black,…
My wife’s younger brother took heroin and died in the bed he slept in as a boy across the hall from the one she slept in as a girl. He sold the pot he grew in their basement and she’d leave work to take him to rehab but their father was the unhappiest child in…
There’s more to it than spilling our red garbage can into the city’s big blue bin. I have to slip from bed without waking my wife. (I pretend I’m a silk handkerchief, the bed’s a pocket; then I pick myself.) I sneak past my children’s bedrooms, where they lie submerged in sleep. Easing shut the…
In my little museum of erotica I would place your feet. I would place your feet sandwiching my feet. Their softness. Their heat. And I would place your arms as you do mornings, beneath my neck. around my waist, tugging me towards you, my back to your chest. This well-beingness I would set on a…
Where any of us is going in tomorrow’s reckless Lexus is the elemental mystery: despite instructions he left behind, Houdin- i, who could outwit ropes and chains, padlocks and steam- er trunks, could extricate himself from underwater metal crates, could send forth, he was certain, a message from the other side, never cracked the curtain…
Some plucked from flight by sweep of net or grasp of hand, immediately darken and flicker out. A drift of stars becomes mere green beetles scraping the glass bottom of a jar. Other kinds go on flashing, ardent no matter how captive they are, lighting up even the smallest heaven. And still others make a…
Well we did our best in deracinated weather. Daughters were wedding daughters, suddenly. They’d registered at Bed Bath & Beyond. Rain-hurled catalpa flowers bruised the yard. The dual-mothered bride procured a dress, to her surprise. Pert cannabis jungled up. One wandered under oaks, umbrella’d to the hilt, like some female in a lyric or a…
A girth for pack or saddle; a tight grip; a thing done with ease; a certainty to happen. —Webster’s for cinch Two years had slipped by since Cinch moved into the interior to be closer to the projects where he did most of his work, but mostly Cinch was here because this was where he…
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