At the time of Babette, my grandfather was not yet twenty. Although today, and perhaps even then, such youth is not necessarily married to innocence, in his case it was. There were boys his age who had already served in the war and returned, but he was not among them for the unromantic reason that…
There was rain which soon turned To snow and no place we had in mind We wanted to go so we stayed in bed And made love all afternoon . . . As the lamps lit the street We got up from each other Because there was money to be made Because we did not…
With your brother nepenthe you fell through ashen snow his eyes colored a deep caged absolve lifted you spirits green pigeons clawed your lone pant leg intent to fly sexless and regenerative wind in your ear a meditative gait in its black rubber room three laughing figures liplessly drain an impotent effigy of its sombre…
Althea kept a list of the things she could live without—perfumed soaps, clean rugs, cats. It was a long list. She added to it from scraps she wrote on when she thought of them. Every fortnight or so she gathered up the scraps and in her ancient and exquisite longhand added them to her…
My aunt was upset by lesbians: Her sister, her sister’s lover, in particular. She imagined them, I think, giving each other Head over and over, though from what I knew —And I knew plenty—that couple made love With roughly the same frequency As did Auntie and Uncle Snort. They All had plenty to worry about,…
He eats in silence as frost plumes at the panes and stars tighten, teeth marks on the freezing sky. His boots stand in snow water, melting by the wood stove that he burns hot to husk his legs of cold. The fire bumps, drops, cracks in the stove. His wife and daughters’ talk goes louder…
Not far from San Diego steel ship containers packed with jeeps sit unopened and someone I know very well stands on the boulevard, surrounded by the pink and white stucco walls outside my window suspended in this moment between breathing out and breathing in the men and women at Camp Pendleton relax their arms…
—Plato, Republic The cold call of the cold to the cold Follows itself to the moon, To the edge of the storm, to the fold in the fold In the shrouds of the fallen-too-soon. The call of the cold to the never-held, The sung-over, the one-by-one Follows the moon to the world where the world…
April Owen shows up at my flat around midnight. He doesn’t knock, but I spot him waiting in lurk beyond the screen door. Outside, the rain jumps like pixies on the floodlit blacktop. His hair is soaked and his boots are muddy. “Come on in,” I say, and he does, slowly. His eyes have that…
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