My wife and I, we have this game we play called "Confusing the Dog." My wife, she plays the game, knows all the rules, but she doesn't know I named it. I named it about the time I realized we were hooked-us and the dog. The game goes like this: I go to bed or…
It lay like a dark pond behind your eyes rotating on the axis of despair. As someone considers a move to the country you imagined that change of scene. And as your life came to resemble a solitary walk around a deserted lake you dipped your foot into that black water. You took longer walks,…
Of this low stool, the base is a woman naked, stooped, who bears it up with large hands— much larger than her face. For the chief, her hands express service. They gave the carver ten points through which to engineer the stress. Ornamented, they're part of the carver's pleasure in his skill: the fusion of…
Dan had fallen asleep waiting for Nick and this Patty Keith, fallen deep into the lapping rhythm of a muggy Chesapeake evening, and when he heard the slam of car doors the sound came first from a dream. In the hushed amber light of the foyer Dan offered Nick a dazed and disoriented father's hug….
(i) I measure ways out of here. Scan a room, Memorize each exit sign. count the stairs. It's easy to blame the dark, the infinite For what hasn't happened yet. I know all the names Of the highways, the exact wrenchings of elevators, Their clutch: every night I have had to lie a little more…
i am taking in taking in like a lump of a dead baby on the floor mama kicks me i don't feel anything * * * i am taking in taking in i am reading newspapers i am seeing films i am reading poetry i am listening to psychiatrists, friends someone knows the way someone will…
The high-silled window with no shade or sash. Let's start with that, with nothing but big square panes of clean glass, the clear glare of law and the weather, rain mixed with clouds, and wind. And beneath them on the landing, three girls, three teenaged girls, teaching themselves to smoke and to flick ash. And,…
It's not the chapel bell at Arles, only a doorbell rung on television, but it's enough to send the dog in a scurry and yapping to the front door where no one is. I'm not Gauguin, at least not now, the isle of Tahiti has disappeared into the ether of possibility, and the girls, too….
There's no way of knowing what a woman owns until she's dead. Until it's time to clean out her closets and drawers to make room for something else, there's no way of knowing what she needed, and wanted, to hide. "I've been thinking," my sixty-three-year-old father said, "that it's time to go through your mother's…
No products in the cart.