If it's appendicitis, you're in trouble out here on the Isla de Malhado. Despite bright stars there are disturbances. It's three o'clock in the morning. Ashore on the Isla de Malhado the shipwrecked Spanish came to no good end. It's three o'clock in the morning. If it's not an emergency, go back to bed. The…
for Chris Benfey Before sleep last night I lay there in a reverie over L.A., and dreamt of it all night and put off getting up for fear it would go away. All my fears of flying dissipated at the thought of cruising in the air to Los Angeles. I was happy there. I said…
I knock over the bottle of wine. It pours over my feet, cold, leaving a purple stain. This is private land. He is holding a gun. He tries to see between my thighs. The wine is sticky. I don't move. What are you doing? Screwing out here? Like we're the crazy ones. I want to…
Lewis Houser and his thirteen-year-old son, Nathan, were hiding behind a toolshed in the tragic state of Missouri. They had been like that for over an hour-waiting-ready to salvage their lives and take what was theirs. "Ground rule number one," Lewis had told Nathan earlier, "is no talking, not even a single word, because the…
. . . The border Halves a piece of paper into here and hereafter. A man, himself a fascicle of borders, draws a map and can't stop drawing For fear of bleeding, smudging, disappearance. When the map is complete the page will be completely Obscured by detail, then a third howl. Three things…
reshuffling itself over and over again I, the I better than Elvis coming out the mouth of Jesus, knowing the fame which only comes from death. you explain. there is something muddy in the street. it rises in a fiery madness beyond pretense, says: I transcend. noticing itself, falls back from air to mud. the…
Once at night we saw them along the coast's rough edge, a dozen fishermen torching, waist-deep in the shallows. The moon half gone, dragged the tidewater across the coral and over the reef's ledge into the open sea. And as they moved slowly sliding their glass boxes across the water's dark face, some held their…
Mottled grouse peck up gizzard stones before the first snow— seasons move on as if the human heart were not infinitely fragile. The sow bear's stained snout lifts, sniffs the wind, then bows to claws raking in stems, berries, rasping leaves. A twelve-year-old, pleased, tells her aunt I kissed a boy…
The truck in the passing lane flings a stone squarely between my eyes in driving rain: November surprise. Arms of the windshield wiper flail like railroad crossing signs all the way to Seattle. I am leaving behind the scattered ash and the widow's double bed. Alone behind the wheel, I am comforted by old convent…
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