There was a great deal of anticipation surrounding the arrival of the new junior-high teacher. Olivia Gibbs: first, because she was new and from the East, which automatically lent her cultural superiority in the eyes of Mosly's self-effacing citizenry; and, secondly, because, from her resume, it was clear Miss Gibbs had travelled widely and would…
The leaves all blaze, a fireplace's commonplace crimson and gold, the vines become scrawls of a letter hidden from someone — parents, your spouse, or other lover — between newpapers in the kindling bin or only accidentally fallen into flames, and, worse, your only memory of the address is vines black upon leaves blackening after…
How should they look, Indians, California Indians, Streaming down the red dirt road, Igneous dirt, past my mother's Family's house? How should they Look in 1922? Should They be dirty, poor, straggly Unfortunate things, hair matted, Dragging discarded fragments Of cloth, clutching beads Of the cheapest gaudiest Glass? Or should they look heroic, Movie version,…
Dear Philip— The rain. It held off for Marni's graduation this afternoon. Yesterday I wrote you but you were two days a dead man, Jon called this morning to say. “Oh No, no,” is this what we always let out? “Oh no,” and “At least he . . .” Well, you did live by force…
Because I'm up in Air Force One I get to wear my gold-braid baseball cap. And stand before the map of New El Salvador explaining which came first our game of chicken or the other guy's. And burst into applause because. But you know what I miss, all by myself like this? The motorized advance…
Bonfires light a ring of spruce bough shelters on the plain. Singing travels around the circle like secrets passed from ear to ear. Buffalo hide. Medicine bag. The dancers toss their feathered headdresses into the dark; hooves tear the air. We hug our knees to our chests with the children and women wrapped in heavy…
A spinster swats a worm on her tabletop. It was heading for the waffles or the coffee. She's read about this in the tabloids, oceanic worms with nerve systems like radio signals. They are blind as ice picks and don't care. They come in the morning when you're barely awake and carve their initials on…
Love no one, work, and don't let the pack know you're wounded . . . Stupid, disappointed strategies. Hazel wind of dusk, I have lived so much. Friendless eeriness of the new street — The poem does not come, but its place is kept set.
On her sixteenth birthday Anna ventured outside, leaned one hand Against a tree; a boy across the street Threw a rock at her. In bed Anna liked to finger The wooden beads of her mother's rosaries, Though she didn't pray. At fifteen Anna had seen her mother, Changing the linen, die. Graveside from a chair…
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