Dad, Todd, Mal, and me are sitting in the positions I’ve assigned us, and the Mormon Tabernacle Boring is singing the National Anthem really slowly. After forever, we all put our Orioles caps back on as the Pirates take the field, and it’s showtime. My palms are sweating. Mom comes in. “Uh-oh,” I say, not…
Aged prophets, cradled in Crivelli’s gold, on a heat-waved page replicating quattrocento frescos, seem shy above the trees’ periscopes as if the sky were an unfamiliar cathedral, and, should they appear there now, standing between receding clouds, how gilded their halo, what color their gowns and what scripted tablet would they hold to admonish the…
for Nana What’s most fantastical almost always goes unrecorded and unsorted. Take spring. Take today. Take dancing dreamlike; coffee your night, creameries your dream factories. Take walking as a dream, the dearest, sincerest means of conveyance: a dance. Take leave of the notion that this nation’s or any other’s earth can still be the same…
translated by Marilyn Hacker In the country, he talks to her about art About love, about life, he says that he creates And he loves, she says that his painting Is rubbish, he says that art is life, She says that he’s a layabout, He plays at pricking her with a blade of grass, she…
As Pastor Everett made the announcements that began the service, Clareese Mitchell stood with her choir members, knowing that once again she had to Persevere, put on the Strong Armor of God, the Breastplate of Righteousness, but she was having her monthly womanly troubles, and all she wanted to do was curse the Brothers’ Church…
You’re writing down next spring’s garden: beans, tomatoes, squash & so on. Outside, snow sticks everywhere, clogging everything up, hemming You in. When done you pick up the newspaper. In the obits there’s always someone you know. They come & go, & you never Quite get used to it. Walking …
Man is the cruelest animal. She wanted to sleep with the philosopher, she wanted to feel the warmth of his back against her chest. Some people had trouble with the consonants, others reversed the vowels. He made her think—that was his gift. She wanted to name a restaurant after him, the offerings cued to his…
She had passed a Wilderness, an Apache, an Escaper, a Montana, and, tragically, a Swinger. Now it was a Yellowstone Capri, the geezer in the wheelhouse plying the highway, scanning for snags. You can be Yellowstone, or you can be Capri, Helen thought. But you can’t, big buddy, be both. She dusted it. The motor…
across the Passaic’s asphalt drawbridge into the heart of Kearny— my cheeks flushed with wine—you the muse I did not choose dragging danger down in chains across the hangdog face of me as I followed you upriver, wanting you to cleanse me like a sari fitted through a virgin’s wedding band—why else would I cruise…
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