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  • from Perma Red

    Bad Ways On the Flathead Reservation you can come to a spot in the road where the wind smells like sulfur, a dark smell, something you think you should be able to leave behind you, but it will be in your clothing and in your shoes. And there will be a darkness in the way…

  • The Human Voice

    All night rain ran down the window in the spare bedroom where I slept; outside, the lime tree’s runneled leaves absorbed wave after wave of the Pacific storm, which, like a riot, had been pre- dicted by the authorities; awake in the smallest hour, I heard a woman’s voice rise and join the weather— my…

  • Roman Sketchbook

    AS As you come and go from a place you sense the way it might seem to one truly there as these clearly determined persons move on the complex spaces and hurry to their obvious or so seeming to you destinations. “Home,” you think, “is a place still there for all,” yet now you cannot…

  • Seed

    1. He looked at the seed for a long time. His mind did not comprehend. It did not flower anymore. The seed was just a seed.                                            She had said it was begonia. He tried to imagine what begonias looked like. Purple blossoms, rich yellow, supple orange, blue petals? The mind that made the seed…

  • True Prophets

    Their speech doesn’t sound prophetic: “Wish the damn heat would let up.” “Do you carry three-inch finishing nails?” Too late their wisdom becomes clear. True prophets, though, care nothing for prophecy. It just sweats out of them like garlic from the pores of one who eats Korean food. Prophets adore food which is thoughtfully prepared….

  • Believe This

    There was a time I wanted nothing so much as home. In the rain I loved you, in the hot days; The corn ripened; I was a child of storms And of seasons. I ventured and was lost, But, oh, those salty songs of the damned! Death has a green foot, And we dance like…

  • Surrounded

    There are no albums of family photographs in our house. Before he left last Sunday night, Gort must have carried them all out the front door and piled them at the curb for the garbage men. The black marbled copybooks full of nature notes must have gone the same way; when I broke into the…

  • Black: Her Story

    The Mexican Mother Meets the Oldest Living Virgin of Manila Q ueridisimo Doctorcito: Thank you for the foetus you sent me. The baby boy. Would you say I was a jazz poem, spit from the mouth of a saxophone? Or would you send me straight to hell? Pensamiento, pentimento, pimiento . . . Can you…