Article

  • Little Stabs of Happiness

    The night Sam Cooke was shot, I ran out into the backyard and shouted, “Suck my dick, God!” My father slapped my face, said if he ever heard me say anything like that again, I could forget about driving, ever— I'd be in my own house with my own kids and he'd show up to…

  • Un Poeta/A Poet

    Poco filo mi resta, ma spero che avrò modo di dedicare al prossimo tiranno i miei poveri carmi. Non mi dirà di svenarmi come Nerone a Lucano. Vorrà una lode spontanea scaturita da un cuore riconoscente e ne avrà ad abbondanza. Potrò egualmente lasciare orma durevole. In poesia quello che conta non è il contenuto…

  • Gravedona

    Lost in Gravedona without a map, You ask directions in handicap Italian of a stout old woman. She laughs, “Stop struggling, come in, And whilst I think them out, I'll make us tea And, if you don't mind, have a chat with me For I'm half-Welsh, half-Genovese.” Her father built this house, planted trees “That…

  • Round Trip

    Pappy died, I flew home, sat on the same old couch holding my mother's head to my breast, the skull for later beneath the frizzy perm: haunch of a starving lamb. No hole, no stone: smoke, a few words for the assembled testimonial few, too much bourbon not enough dry turkey then backwards in the…

  • Sera di Pasqua/Easter Evening

    Alla televisione Cristo in croce cantava come un tenore colto da un'improvvisa colica pop. Era stato tentato poco prima dal diavolo vestito da donna nuda. Questa è la religione del ventesimo secolo. Probabilmente la notte di San Bartolomeo o la coda troncata di una lucertola hanno lo stesso peso nell'Economia dello Spirito fondata sul principio…

  • The Seduction at Villa Carlotta

    Nature is never wrong, the lilies say, Simply alive in the pond, life goes on. Despite carnivorous violence, firestorms, We are porcelain quiet. Sit on this bench, Listen to the Baroque Ensemble play Music composed during the French Revolution; cherish the bees Closed in our petals, close your eyes, Close them, close yourself in these…

  • Circumstances

    This happened just once. Desire had stopped at some remote crossroads. I don't know whose heart just stood there without an owner. It was one of those little folds in time when the absurd moon could rise without a purpose. We all knew where melancholy could lurk in ravines, or even lie sprawled out by…

  • Ramponio

    A seemingly obliterating storm Rinses the haze from peaks you hadn't seen before. Red-and-white peppermint parasails Float above the gift shops of Bellagio. In Lake Como, youth bare-breasted and muscular, Fill speedboats and sailboats, a girl With long blond hair stands on her father's shoulders And dives into the polluted waters. The roads dry, you…