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  • Wind, Horse, Snow

    1. The Eskimo children balance their blackboards on their knees and write with soft fat chalk. A storm skitters across the frozen sea. Smidgeons of ice have swirled into pinwheels. 2. The painter Magritte is dabbing black paint on his canvas. Beneath the clock he writes “wind,” beneath the door “horse.” 3. The Eskimo children…

  • The Old Mistakes

    Having begun the day with a headache, Bonnie Saks was not particularly surprised to find herself finishing it the same way. Pain, in her experience, never disappeared; it merely retreated for a while and then came back when least convenient in another form. Like men, she thought. All afternoon there had been a chilly, puttering…

  • Invisible City

    Hasn’t everyone lived in an invisible And essentially unreal, imaginary city With beautiful empty buildings on byways Or sewers called canals filled with Slopping water and huge coffins offering Pronged upright musical clefs to the air As the whole load staggers nobly Toward the extraordinary, and maybe Venice Was named for Venus, the gondola For…

  • Midday, Too Hot for Chores

    July 1878 Even sage hens were panting. Belle Bishop and I dangled our feet in a cooling bucket of well water while sewing clothes for our corn husk dolls. On the horizon, particles like a fine snow blew across washboard sand and platinum wheat grass. Sheep stampede, I said. And Belle said, Corn silk does…

  • Eggs

    The Andersons’ house perched on the corner of our block like a dinosaur, with wings and a tail that spread into the lot behind it, growing in sections as the family increased. Mrs. Anderson had five children by her first husband, who died in bed of a heart attack the morning of their tenth anniversary….

  • Living with Monkeys

    It’s not a nice thing. Not a nice idea. Or it might be a nice idea. Who knows? King Kong. Mighty Joe Young. Cheetah. But it’s not nice, not really. Living with monkeys is not pretty. Beside the quart of chocolate milk (which had to be divided equally, my brothers and sister slowly measuring), live…