“Dear Muzz,” I wrote, the summer I was ten from a seedy nature camp in the Poconos with cows and calves, huge geese, some half-wild ponies —heaven for the urban savage I was then— “I have to do this letter to get breakfast. Kiss Kerry for me. I milked a cow named Clover.” (Kerry, my…
See my colors fall apart? Green to yellow with just one shade gone, the changing tints of your sun-struck eyes, if there were sun. Today the prism held to mine’s a prison, locking in the light. In one of those mirrors the colors are true. In one of these pictures the pigment’s my own….
Kirby Dexter is forty-six years old, and for as long as he has practiced law, more than twenty years, he has thought of himself as someone who solves problems. He is a CPA as well as a tax attorney, and he is the person to call if you want something airtight. He is accustomed to…
Where is the Life we lost in living? -T. S. Eliot When America died, I was passed out and I never noticed. Was it a meteor or an invisible wand that waved past our eyes and blinded everyone? I awoke one morning and electrical maggots were spurting from the mind-control machine in our disheveled living…
from The Farewell Symphony Tomorrow is Toussaint in Paris, All Saint’s Day, and I suppose I’ll visit Brice’s little white marble plaque in the columbarium at Père Lachaise. Why do I avoid it for months on end? I keep thinking of a couple of Americans we met during the year before Brice died. One…
Today is my fortieth birthday. I don’t feel old at all. I’ve been sitting here for a while, on this courtyard bench, and if she’s coming, then she’s late. Married couples walk around, trying to interest each other, pointing to the faded pink walls and to the iron balustrades. The men tell the women facts…
for Andre Foxxe A good show Starts in the Dressing room And works its way To the stage. Close the door, Andre’s cross- Dressing, what A drag. All The world loves A bride, something About those gowns. A good wedding Starts in the Department store And works its way Into…
A bird sings from the tree. The birds sing sending waves of desire—and I stand on my roof waiting for a randomness to storm my days. I stand on my roof filled with the longing that sings its way out of the bird. And I am afraid that my call will break me, that the…
Award-winning poet and renowned editor, lesbian activist and literary formalist, native New Yorker and expatriate American in Paris — Marilyn Hacker, who is all these identities and more, gloriously defies all attempts at easy categorization. “It’s not a question of an issue,” she says in describing the relationship between her art and her convictions, “but…
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