It was an old river town and then the river moved away. Happens all the time: the river decides it doesn't like living next to people, there's a flood upstream and the river takes its chance. The problem with this is that some people who lived on the river are now seriously grieved. They do…
fell early this morning, long before we awoke so that by the time we had dressed, had coffee, there was no trace of it anywhere. All afternoon, I couldn't put my finger on what was missing. You said it was probably nothing or only me distorting the facts again. But in my usual way I…
I catch this glimpse of you wheeling your shopping cart along our empty street I see your nakedness And stepping from my car with my briefcase, wanting to catch you before you disappear in the doorway, I also express our odd jobs fighting the vacancy, and the solitude.
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,…
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