Between his crib slats the baby fed on them, a man, a woman, the white sheet they turned to, the vows, the sweats, they traded, gulping. Afterward, someone in shadow got up, put on the falling light, first footsteps of the rain, returning only to help prepare their supper. The other dozed before the window's…
In abalone, northern lights settle down like barnacles incrusting holds of chinaware beneath the seas. Light plays, rolling designs on waves— hypnotic damascene— and gaze turns into sea-stare trained on the slates of eternity. Beyond, below, the headlands, magnitudes of brightness fade; light settles down, losing speed in long…
For days the last day has burned the palm like a rough rope and each child vibrates with escape, dreaming past the swing and collide of bees in heavy sunlight. The mountain ash drags its silver knuckles against the window pane. The nuns glisten and continue. In Polish accents they say what heaven says, this…
Arthur isn't convinced his wife is going shopping. She rarely buys anything. It's months until Christmas, nowhere near his birthday, yet this is the third Saturday in a row she's gone. "Shopping," she says, buttoning up her blouse. A warm mist from her shower floats into their bedroom. "Just shopping." It's a good sign she's…
My mother and her friends fit into the sockets of the no-color sky, tilted ocean sky. The salt-filmed air — a plagiary of the air condition in the mill where they work: its measure of exact seams, the quick symmetrical rhythm of eight precise motions. I am older than she is here in her zip-back…
I would never say anything against the dead. I would drop my clothes to them and say yes, see how the sun won't leave alone what we cover. My neighborhood is startlingly luminous. Yesterday yellow tanks steamshovelled for the underworld. Otters dove to sleek back their hair. On the bench a man old as dirt…
Herself She was most of all herself with the children who touched her arm without thinking as if fingers had a life of their own who liked her who listened to her joke and gave back appreciation and could whoop who finished in the tub a song she started at the stove. As much her…
Grandmother said her grandmother unwrapped the knives & forks each meal, backward-walking to the cabin she left. She remembered her dishes on the shelf, a book, her feather bed. The way sun dusted the floor. Soldiers could come again & push her on a trail in the dead of winter. After the removal she started…
San Zaccaria, Venice All day long, the madonna runs by the river in her red and blue gown. The wet earth steams, and cabbage fields bear the lace of her footprints. Maria, her mother calls over and over across the fields. But in the end, after many tries, Bellini can't do it. He loves too…
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