The poetry club in Jean’s neighborhood scheduled readings of new works every Wednesday in the basement of a popular restaurant, The Two Bruce Café. A surprising lot of people showed up regularly to hear and then critique the week’s artistic efforts, and the two lawyers named Bruce who owned the place felt rewarded because the…
One glimpse—that’s all, then in no time flat, Coyote’s beguiled, spit-shine kempt: cologne-scented singer, bouquet-bringer, acrobatic twister into arabesques: What can I change? What’s the sure-fire ingredient? How many howls make a billet-doux? Good luck, sings the swan-white moon, good luck and let me know— No desert…
…these blinds give people control over light; they let the outside in and still allow a feeling of privacy in a glassed room. —from a brochure on window treatments you say what I remember didn’t happen and hanging the blinds I admit my dreams swerve from rippled instants to serial repeats I think about the…
3. While I was living in Greece, my girlfriend in America had an affair with a Greek boy, a biology student named Vassilis, who was renting a room in the same house as her. Sweet-tempered, flabby, inexpert, he made her feel at ease. He was gone when I got back, but I squeezed it out…
Every day, whether we realize it or not, we choose one of two stars to guide us, a star as ephemeral as our life, a star water can wash away. One star is made of packed sugar, the other of packed salt. Water melts both. If we choose the star of sugar we will follow…
The rooms where you entertained me are open to view And expensive now. But I’m drawn that way. The sea steps ashore up wide ascents of marble. Corinthian columns ruffle like bedclothes. Rough side of a towel, smooth side of silk. Your mare’s-tails unravel, and cloud the royal blue. A brown Raleigh three-speed. A wide-tired…
Duluth, Minnesota Read hawk’s story ink scrawls Across a paper sky the goodbye To time A woman Turning through wrinkled Leaves The Wood is in the Garden Is in the Wash The wind wraps all of us With winter Almost silence Then melts ice into spring Tongues loosen She snaps twigs Beneath…
Nights standing in a field or sleeping under the stars, I sense that one of those pebbles of light must be signaling me from deep space. I know this is no more than my own longing cast like fishing line into the depths of another kind of ocean, and that my aloneness is reflected in…
At sixteen, I worked after high school hours at a printing plant that manufactured legal pads: Yellow paper stacked seven feet high and leaning as I slipped cardboard between the pages, then brushed red glue up and down the stack. No gloves: fingertips required for the perfection of paper, smoothing the exact rectangle. Sluggish by…
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