We raked until raking puffed our mitts with hot blisters. Then we desisted. Wind de-raked our raking then, spilled the tops of our piles, blew new-fallen bronzes across brief spans of lawn. We worked like the damned: I the Sisyphus of fall, you the Sisyphus of autumn. Rakes dropped, we drifted through discarded wrappers to…
I think I will become a selfish man. That’s what it will take to purge myself of my sick need to give. Strong is stubborn, many-limbed, but single-minded. Alone. I think I will be just like Eric was in boarding school. Early in the morning, when insomniacs sit awake, I would watch him running hard…
I stood before the lintel; the door swung open then. Your name was there, and mine, and the date of every birth— all was clear as day, but they could not bring me in. Beyond another door and then another, endless more, yet the distance had been measured in the dust— one print stepping after…
Christmas defeated Chanukah once again last night by a margin of three billion dollars or so, but every time I hear a Yiddish word like bupkes in a movie (L.A. Confidential) or when Oleg Cassini in that new play Jackie calls a garment a shmatta, it’s “good for the Jews,” as our parents used to…
One summer he planted a tree it was young, just a few branches no bigger than a rosebush. We were intent on watching it we were young we wanted the fruit to come. Father brought the coffee can outside paced between the tree and the backyard spigot. We liked to watch him fill the can…
I sat in a crowded place away from you at dinner and did not pray you’d come near: did not imagine the hall our private room; did not want to approach you with an air of feigned indifference, leaving my meal- time companions behind; did not conspire alone to lure you into talk, to feel…
Kneeling last night as children sometimes do, After scrubbing off the filth of the day, Undressed at my bed I bent and prayed For some warm dream, for some comforting sooth To say, In the morning, arise. My sleep was elusive, as it often can be, The starry firmament of self reproach Circumnavigating this shabby…
1. The Sandbox We celebrated a funeral for a dead ladybug and smoothed the surface with the belly of a spoon. Who would count the tiny dots now, or study the long crawl and sudden flight? We dug a pit for a hemlock leaf curled into itself. We said last rites for a fleck of…
Last night I walked in a field. The moon lit the snow: snow gray as the moon. And tried to remember your face—Luna Moth, circling the cold flame of the moon. At the same moment you looked up, protracting the old angle: self, secret-love, and the moon. The earth was young too. But what’s left…
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