What is this writing life? I was living alone in a house once, and had set up a study on the first floor. A portable green Smith-Corona typewriter sat on the table against the wall. I made the mistake of leaving the room. I was upstairs when I felt the first tremor. The floor wagged…
When I first arrived in this city I heard coins falling through the air like rain, light collecting on dusty sleeves, in gum boxes and tins; the addicts walked by a smoking pail humming into their hands. We hiked one afternoon along the river, picnicked in the ruins of a trolley station and played with…
The Heart wants what it wants— or else it does not care— —Emily Dickinson So still. Not a cricket. In this heat the trees around the house hold motionless even at midnight. I trundle the electric fan, little pool of wind, along with me from room to room, and imagine Emily Dickinson carrying a candle…
Sit, he orders. She sits But Heaven knows he was only talking to the dog. Folding down bedclothes, he discovers his socks she made into them. He's already rewashed dinner dishes while she was in the shower. Still, in bed she alone teaches him how to cross his eyes. Holding his penis like a microphone,…
Sarah didn't pause to watch the water-seller scurry from his spot in the shade to the path leading to the ruins and gardens. The shallow copper bowls ringed to the belts crisscrossing his bright red shirt jangled softly and flashed in the sunlight. The water-seller made a show of splashing the ground in front of…
Almost time to dress for the sun's total eclipse so the child pastes one last face in her album of movie stars—Myrna Loy and Olivia de Havilland—names meant to conjure sultry nights, voluptuous turns across some dance floor borne on clouds. Jean Harlow. Clipped from the Newark evening paper, whole galaxies of splendid starlets gaze,…
There was a flatiron brick building built to tower over a gasoline station, a billboard against the wall—I don't know, Drink Milk, a white pillar of it filling a glass—a Gulf sign swinging over Princess Street, and at the top of the hill to Garfield Elementary, a bridge over Pennsy railroad tracks, and if a…
I pick him up and take him to the beach. He is always the same and always his sameness changes me. It takes him forever to fold his yellow shirt and blue Bermudas and finally sit. Counting rented umbrellas, he calls out their red and green colors, updating the information every minute. Sun closes in….
It rains in Rodney, in the winter. But we have history; even for Mississippi, we have that. There's a sweet olive tree that grows all the way up to the third story, where Elizabeth's sun porch is. Butterflies swarm in the front yard, in the summers, drunk on the smell of the tree; but in…
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