The quarry master's house at the far end of town still tilts on the brink of ruin like a clamshell balanced on a rock as goggle-eyed motorcycle gangs gun their engines around the curve. . . . It is ten years since we lived there. We arrive at the dock this time at dusk and…
—we enter and it is our home —Mary Oppen one In a strange city, remote, British, yet barely hanging onto civilization. We are here at the edge. What is asked while closing the door, while turning the corner? Your child is asleep with her last question. By day, I can only manage poor explanations of…
Midsummer's Eve: rain slants into docked barges near the Jardin des Plantes Cut your losses. Soon the inhabitants will leave the city to the international monoglot young. Out of the smallest, oldest perched village branch well-marked paths, beside the stream, the ravine. The streams flow down into the local river. The footpaths widen into roads…
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.
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