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  • Sleep Tight

    The sky was still black when Joe Hennessy came out to stand in his driveway, and the moon was nothing more than a shadow. It wasn't unusual for Hennessy to be out at odd hours; he hadn't been able to sleep for two weeks, not since he was promoted to detective. He could feel his…

  • The Poet-In-Residence

    He makes a myth of everything he does: At dawn he puts his shirt on—that's a poem; At night he takes it off—same deal. Alone, He drinks to blot out the young man he was. Oh, he was fine—muscles rippling, the fire Of subject matter in his eyes: his home Was what he wrote about…

  • She’s Not Dead, Belle

    This was the year the summer would not end in Europe. Even the terrorists went about their work in short-sleeved shirts and sandals, hurtling from target to target in air-conditioned BMWs. It was the Chernobyl summer also, and a Polish emigré she knew linked the hazy sunny days and humid nights to the Soviet rads…

  • Almanac

    1. The sky is like the belly of a snake. 2. My mare shakes powdered sugar from her coat. 3. How much freeze and thaw can tulips take? 4. The river's out. We come and go by boat. 5. John Deeres upholster fields in corduroy. 6. Shoots flicker like heat lightning through the dust. 7….

  • The Critic

    The “texts” hang from her jaws like bags of feed— The one end chews; the other drops its pile. The nameplate on her door reads, or should read: “World's Largest Overstimulated Child.” Like Pegasus, she takes the “aerie” view— (Whose work holds interest if her own cannot?)— And trundles down the runway, lifts—(Mon Dieu! The…

  • Blackberries

    They left my hands like a printer's Or thief's before a police blotter & pulled me into early morning's Terrestrial sweetness, so thick The damp ground was consecrated Where they fell among a garland of thorns. Although I could smell old lime-covered History, at ten I'd still hold out my hands & berries fell into…

  • The Scab

    In the almost empty dance hall at a corner of Beale, he played guitar with a fat, black bassist and a thin drummer nobody in the audience saw. His hair greasy and stringy, pants with thick red corduroy pleats, he picked the blues indifferently, as though wishing he were asleep, or high, or dead. He…

  • Double Exposures

    99.9% are phony. It's child's play to fake a photo of a UFO. —Carl Sagan Ghostly over the trees, red light, blue light,      a lava-bright glow against the evening mist,           it must look it's hovering in some otherworldly physics, yet perfection      means the photo is a little crude, an amateur's           brilliant luck, Zapruder's grainy fifteen…