I caught it and screamed for water. Someone carried a pail, I plunged my hands in. The water boiled. I wore violet gloves beaded with glass. Now what do I do with this water. How can I pick the pail up, where should I set it. How to turn doorknobs and enter rooms and not…
for CHW (1916-1979) 1. The Mountain A meadow in Vermont, on Bread Loaf Mountain. I watched you walk with a dancer's quick walk along the path on the edge of the meadow. Your shoulders were bent like a scholar's but your legs were the legs of a dancer. Your jacket, thick for a hot summer…
* As soon as the full-blown bubble leaves the hand and breaks, we are back in the Keatsian vale of soul-making, having to do it all over again. Cabbages, stones, clods of bound earth—unpromising material with which to start, but better, perhaps, than waiting for divinity. The soul is no homunculus, crouching inside with unfledged…
I. The landlord's daughter speaks of it in Portuguese as if she were eating a flower. On the corner, her slender arms crossed like the words of caution whispered between sisters, she watches cars slide by with an intelligent eye, studies their shapes as abstracts of possible entanglements. Only her father's house has a garden,…
Certain habits can seem miraculous in the thoughts of the dispossessed: to have chosen your own clothing from stores and then your closet, to have shaven yet again in the mist dulling your bathroom mirror— such are the dreams of the homeless. . . I rarely consider my fingers or tongue until slicing or slamming…
On Monday she washed, On Tuesday she ironed, On Wednesday she visited her father, carrying seven starched shirts, a basket of folded underclothes, and a complete dinner in foil. On Thursday she cleaned, On Friday she shopped, On Saturday she handed nails to my father, who swore at her slowness. On Sunday she took a…
Our lures trail in the prop-wash, skipping to mimic live bait. Minutes ago I watched you cut up the dead shrimp that smell like sex. Now we stand, long filmy shapes jigsawed by the waves, and wait for the rods to arc heavy with kingfish. We bring the limit of eight on board, their teeth…
No cows in summer's last alfalfa behind the chainlink fence topped with barbed wire— a fence just higher than a man, while in the duty room—clean, without the septic smell of public asylums and painted primary green— two inmates back from Work Release slap and rattle a Coke machine, younger than I'd hoped men doing…
There is a store, it is an individual, like you, me, a body, corporate, you or I might go into this store and see racks of empty cardboard boxes covered with a picture and with words on the back with the typeface neutral and readable while the title on the front reaches out by some…
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