24 may dear brenda, i have three mfa letters to write; lately i have been obliging all my students to write on the same schedule, which means i have one week of very hard work, followed by, or interspersed with, three weeks of anxious leisure, in which i wonder what i ought to do with…
. . . the bird on a branch painted by some Sung academician is a symbol to express what we might call the bird-on-bough aspect of eternity. The Arts of China, Sullivan On a branch somewhere in eternity a bird sits, each feather one silhouette of the brush laid flat on the page, each leaf…
I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money. . . — from a Tina Turner song When Celina arrived the floor was on fire. You could tell by her hips and her mouth she was built for the tango. Glasses of clear amber danced the tables on the tango rhythm. You could tell this place…
The Burbank evening hugs the little jet. Commuters, standing on the rubber-padded stairs, look inside the engines and feel comforted, see how sensual, full-lipped they are, the metal daisies in each one, then open the starved briefcases on their laps and study graphs of annual reports . . . You're traveling alone, crying, trying to…
On nights when the moon seems impenetrable — a locked porthole to space; when the householder bars his windows and doors, and his dog lies until dawn, one jeweled eye open; when the maiden sleeps with her rosy knees sealed tightly together, on such nights the safecracker sets to work. Axe . . . Chisel…
1. Blue, Arrival She arrives but isn't met because he lost the time of her arrival. The blue air of late autumn carries her to the gate, where she turns over her first-class ticket stub to the mute at the ticket window. When he looks up he sees the cobalt stone balancing her middle finger,…
I can clear my name. It was my brother, not me, Who stole your fruit And sold that pop Bottle on your porch, Nickel for his pocket And a jaw breaker that Shattered like a star When Mother got us alone, Naked with our two sins. It was brother, not me. I was saintly that…
On the prairie's edge they buried the president, and you can eat your lunch near his clean, shiny tomb. Still, too many people can't pay their rent. The grasslands beyond once covered with tents. He was born here: for free you can see his house, its tiny rooms. On the prairie's edge they buried…
in memory of Stephen Blos Although we always come this way I never noticed before that the poplars growing along the ravine shine pink in the light of a winter dawn. What am I going to say in my letter to Sarah — a widow at thirty-one, alone in the violence of her grief, sleepless,…
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