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 cows once believed that if you stand in a pond shaped like a circle during the full moon you'll die. That was everyone's first summer and it finally got so hot the animals decided to hire another cow to go in the water. Just to be sure. This was a cow nobody cared much…
This could be any city, the poor parts, poverty both camouflaged and signaled by unplowed snow. The morning paper still lies on the doorstep, touched only by the cold gloves of a boy who moves in his own world from house to house, past a silhouette pulling a sweater on, to a woman who answers…
My heart and my bones wince. It's so damn sad-looking and ugly, The Bronx— Driving past those small hills Blighted for miles with brick Desert-similar apartment buildings: The landscape I come from. It's so damn ugly in its torment Of knifings and fires, I forget I was happy there, sometimes, In its damp and dingy…
I signed the letter, Mary then noticed my mistake and added: As you can see, I am going crazy, I think I am a virgin. Love, Mary. There was nothing to feel guilty about, it wasn't a bad letter. I spoke some of my children, a little of my husband. While serious, it said nothing…
Survivors return to the place where something terrible happened, crippled and set free by the deaths around them. They know they'll go too someday so they won't go quietly, and in this knowledge they stand out like trees you never notice until autumn, when the plain ones rage and the common maple seems to set…
I think of my father Working quietly at an easel, With small strokes globing The fruit and wine bottles. How many breasts he painted In pears and oranges and green glass, Getting inside the blouses of things Twice a week in the rented studio He shared downtown. The stillness of the subjects, And their reticence,…
Rain falls on the carnival grounds, the rides, motionless, loop the gray sky with painted iron & height that would impress Paris a hundred years ago. They keep to themselves what death must seem like when the soul leaves the body. No one will make their money. With the flat of his hand a drunken…
Neither of us had an easy winter, though it must have looked like it, sitting at a window on the bay with glasses of whiskey. The low tide brought birdlife, dogs, bits of clay or porcelain plate, and tourists taking the lazy way to town. High tide covered everything right up to the porch, and…
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