There's a photo of you that we all love. You're wearing your “Surf Russia” shirt, a beer in your left hand. John says it's typical that you have alcohol. You're standing near both the camera and the door as if you had it in mind to leave us all along, waiting for the right time…
I didn't know much about Marilyn Monroe the day she died. I'd heard her name. The world's most beautiful woman has killed herself, said the newscaster. I saw her stretcher on the black-and-white television. I was visiting my cousin's fiancé's house—visiting strangers. But the news about Marilyn had me squeezed on the couch in that…
Thank you for these tiny particles of ocean salt, pearl-necklace viruses, winged protozoans: for the infinite, intricate shapes of sub-microscopic livin things. For algae spores and fungus spores, bonded by vital mutual genetic cooperation, spreading their inseparable lives from Equator to pole. My hand, my arm, make sweeping circles. Dust climbs the ladder of light….
Hey Tard! Dan and I just decided; we’ve gone celibate! D’ya hear?! We ain’t gonna have sex no more! ‘Course we decided it down at JR’s. It was like a proclamation. Dan got up on the bar and yelled, “I hereby declare that I shall never have sex again!” But you know him. His vow…
Like holes punched in a tin roof, thinks Diverne. Up North, night don't mean nothing. Just like day. She wears good herbs. She prays. She'll never learn to quiet night's deep silences the way the African women did: they could bring the island stars down close. Up North so dark seem like somebody dying. When…
Back in the drafty hovel, the fishwife nonetheless wants. My daughter pats my cheek, asks what I want. Too much, I sigh. The moment already lost in her childhood past.
1. Fear of Subways Sometimes in the dark I fear trampling, an effortless extinction of the spirit underground: mass transit overflowing onto dangerous edges of piers. It connects palpably to suffocation, a child's version of rape, vapid plots of war movies—but who's the victim? I used to envy the unrapable, not for any power-mad apparatus…
It's Sunday evening. Pomp holds the receipts of all the colored families on the Hill in his wide lap. He shows which white stores cheat these patrons, who can't read a monthly bill. His parlor's full of men holding their hats and women who admire his daughters' hair. Pomp warns them not to vote for…
Elgar: Enigma Variations, Op. 36 For what does my longing long? Can I sing my own epitaph? Exactly how infinite are you? Military intelligence. (Military intelligence? Is that what I said?) In laughter hope and despair meet. Play it for me, Sam. At my funeral.
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