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Moral Theology

Adultery is wrong because injustice is done to the beloved. Fucking has nothing to do with it. We don't fuck, anyway. Winging it, maybe, Lilith to Eve. This is stern stuff: the boundaries breaking your voice, your mouth on my mind—wildfire eyes! The sisters are doing it for themselves, uh-huh, un-huh, Aretha sings. belts out…

Wherever You Find It

Where do I find Jesus, he asked the operator. She gave him the number she'd seen on TV, and now he's saved in San Francisco, but listen, folks, we're in this soup together. Last night the car seat burned. Then the zoo, the bears, and lastly the kitchen, and I was afraid. Love's doing well…

Il Etait Une Fois

Who owned anything that afternoon? All but one small pack— even the man I should have been in love with— left on the train without me. I sat, ordered up a sweet brown Pelforth. After all, I could not be sadder than I could. In the café de la gare in a town called Foix…

The Wrecker

Cally was sitting Indian-style on the hood of their banged-up Impala, her jeans unbuttoned halfway down to ease the strain of morning sickness. Earlier in the day it had been foggy and cold, and she was still wrapped in one of Jack's blue flannel shirts, her blond hair falling down over her shoulders. She was…

Poppies

for R. H. After visits to his hospital bed where sickness slowly played a jazz garden in his head, I watered leaves and stems to a green brilliance, troweled back the influence of weeds, things I'd do for any friend knowing what is temporary. Just days before his release the leaves grew brassy, stems decidedly…

The Winter Road

. . .they have passed into the world as abstractions, no one seeing what they are —Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887-1986 1 Late winter light Suppose it comes from the snow blowing all day across your winter road umber with violet shadows Or suppose it comes from some energy farther away that may never be understood to…

A Wave of the Hand

In those days-I mean the Forties and Fifties, of course-people were so extremely reticent and modest that the hard questions might not even come to mind, let alone to words. Perhaps if I had discovered all at one blow that Oliver was in truth an Olive. I might have reacted more strongly. But it didn't…

Pas de Deux

Excuse me, Sir, if sweet words turn to silver bullets in bad light where industrial signs stammer VACANCY all night over peep shows and fortified wines in the eye of the most liveable city. But you see this overcoat won't release me though winter's 5 months through and I'm sick to death of the mouthwash…

Somerset Alcaics

East Coker: sun afire in midwinter, rain-of-gold Teardrops at tip of holly and ivy leaf      Instills nativity. (A warm day Travelers had of it down from Wells to St. Michael's Church, where T. S. E.'s ancestors Once bowed their heads then sailed for “Jerusalem.”)      Scion, return and nest your ashes Here in the wall at…