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Imagine that all you can do is glitter and you are only one small star in an expanse as wide as infinity is, and surrounded by a darkness filled up with other glitterings, fire and rock making flame into a voice. And these other small voices are all you hear in the void, their cries…

The dogs have stopped barking. Even the grass has grown quieter, holding back from the wind. As you and I walk down the sidewalk, our voices are like a memory, whose deep purpose has gone inside, into the walls and floors and ceilings, where it no longer reaches the air but lies in wait for…

in memory of F.C. (1965–1991), who died of AIDS complications But there under the dark eaves of rain forest, we found Broughtonia, its crimson petals aflame, its yellow throat, veins hinting purple, rising to a sanguine corolla surrounded by sepals as crinkled as mourning crepe. We followed a path lengthened slash by slash, the islanders…

As I walked onto the ward a soldier’s voice rose up tender out of the dusk— I thought you were my sister. You have those Irish features. He was American, a medic during Tet, whose spirit returned now in spurts like flames from a clogged gas jet. Death tanks down the door and your mind…

It wasn’t exactly raining but a little wetness still dribbled down. I had been reading and sorrowing and set out with the dogs as an antidote. They went ahead snuffling in the leaf plaster. Despite the steady snick of my clippers boletus mushrooms kept popping soundlessly out of the ground. How else account for the…

You’re a nurse now and this ward ain’t the schoolbook, so you sedate him, paraldehyde, 5 ccs each hip, and don’t expose it to air, it’ll turn to vinegar, it’ll eat plastic and it reeks, use a glass syringe and DON’T DROP IT. Junkies howl and sweat and beg but they won’t seize and code…

I never thought we’d meet. Now here he is, swinging his arms like a speed-walker. I thought he’d look ancient—almost half a century—but in my telescope, he looks a lot like me: a few less hairs, a limp I don’t like the look of, but not an old man, certainly, though reading glasses dangle from…