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  • The Garden Was Entering The Sea

    The garden was entering the sea Cape of deep carnation Your hand was leaving with the tide Smoothing the sea's bridal gown Your hand was opening the sky. Angels with eleven swords Were sailing alongside your name Slashing through the flowery waves Down below the white sails leaned In quick northeasterly squalls. With the white…

  • The Catherine-Wheels

    The Catherine-wheels ogled us from the embankment where the man who lit them was poking them, his face red from the fuse. Today, with the holiday over, my dear, you've gone back to your own city. Yesterday night the clarinets at the time of the explosions, and the voices of families sitting in the piazza…

  • Getting to Know Frederick

    Suddenly Frederick is not at her side. She stops and looks back. There he is, just standing there. He has dropped the duffel to the curb and is staring at his parents' house across the street. He rubs his black beard and shakes his head. Seeing this, she realizes he is facing a rare moment…

  • Notes on Poetics and Ethics

    trans. Greek Martin McKinsey 1. It is one of the talents of great stylists to make obsolete words cease from appearing obsolete through the way in which they introduce them in their writing. Obsolete words which under the pens of others would seem stilted or out of place, occur most naturally under theirs. This is…

  • The Habit of Affection

    People ought to like poetry the way a child likes snow, and they would if the poets wrote it. Wallace Stevens Affection for poems is a personal thing, transcending time, fashion, and even friendship. We return less often to what we admire or approve of than to what we love, and there are surprisingly few…

  • Bad Company

    The widow drove into the cemetery, parked near the mausoleum, and got out with her flowers. The next day was Memorial Day, and the cemetery would be thronged with people. Entire families would arrive to bring flowers to the graves of their loved ones. Tiny American flags would decorate the graves of the veterans. But…

  • Paper Poems (From third Series)

    trans. Greek Edmund Keeley Invulnerable body all naked so point-blank naked with the nipples still erect invulnerable to interior or exterior gunfire and that blue triumphant cunning and the wide trowel in hand covering the cement the smile of the second Christ. *     *      * Hidden behind the massive statue of Zeus he waits for the…

  • Asia

    It's good to live near the water. Ships pass so close to land a man could reach out and break a branch from one of the willow trees that grow here. Horses run wild down by the water, along the beach. If the men on board wanted, they could fashion a lariat and throw it…

  • The Way Of All Flesh

    Early in November, only a few days before his son was to take the Scholastic Aptitude Test, Friedenthal learned that a list of the correct answers could, for a price, be had. He learned this from his business associate, Max Arkin. Arkin knew everything. A stout, darting man, whose freckled scalp winked with sweat through…