Because we suspect ourselves, knowing what we’re capable of, knowing how thin the veneer, wanting to control what gets away from us even now, with restraints wrists, ankles, our chastity belted down so we can save ourselves for and from. Because in our visions our best moments we all speak forbidden languages. Because if anyone…
1. There exists a future when green trees will be extinct. In our ingenuity artificial tree factories—A.T.F.’s— will flourish. Far ahead I see myself walking under one, and I grow uneasy at the thought of chunks of painted concrete swaying in the man-made breeze from bark-textured iron rods. Don’t worry, says the regional safety…
Down where it is dry and wild, across the border where the bad guys went when the sheriff was after them, there is a hilltop. On it live a man and a woman, both expatriates, who drink, give orders to Mexicans, pretend to work. Although they have a blue swimming pool and get all their…
Boys, men, girls, children, mothers, babies. You got to feed them. You always got to keep them fed. Winter summer. They always have to feel satisfied. Winter summer. But then you stop and ask: Where is the food going to come from? Because it’s never-ending, never-stopping. Where? Because your life is spent on feeding them…
Back in the days when life was easy and you could walk down the street at night and not worry about anybody knocking you over the head with some blunt object and taking all of your pocket change, Miss Mamie Jamison, the neighborhood kids’ godmother who gave us money and candy and let us hide…
Jana and I were in the bathtub on a drizzly afternoon, miles from anywhere. She was turning the hot water on and off again with her foot. I leaned against her, comparing legs. It made me think I was seven again, at the Albany Art Museum, copping a feel of those rich velvet cordons when…
The suitcase, deathly still by the door, sun-warm, waiting in the dusk-darkened corner. The cars coming and going there. Summer an endless usher of drugged voices, thunder, cold nights in the fan's path, water thin over the face, the dresser's black square. Then, quick as odor— rain on a jacket, steps in the foyer. In…
I climb the stairs to your loft. You open to me with a cold desirous stare which frightens me. You show me your toys musical instruments, clappers, mallets, drums electronic equipment. Rehearsal city, you say. You show me your room, your bed. Everything is brown. You give me tea. You play the music you have…
You can take it back now, not as in beginning in medias res, but as in your desire for a plot— because if what you want to know is that on January 17 of some new year Toyotas went on sale in Sacramento, where there was a subplot involving the San Francisco dealer, and I…
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