This chorus girl was pensive, Sadness was on her brow, Till she met her Sugar Daddy, And she's ex-pensive now! —from a Varga queen of hearts When Mister Mulryan called me into his office to “show me something,” I was lucky— all he flashed was playing cards, nude women in white cowboy hats, one with…
The woman standing at the right is Alice Fitzsimons Coffey. Those in the portrait with her knew her as Allie, but I think of her as Mama. Her black hair is pulled away from her face and secured at the crown of her head. Her mouth is straight, and her cheeks, even in this old…
If time is our sickness, dearest, health in the flesh would be a rare visit. I could believe it. Today when you called at five in the morning to say Delta flight seven. . .arrive. . .depart. . . I was already dreaming your voice. What I needed was your information. When you arrive it…
Apocryphal, the sweet Hawaiians, a few blue clouds like silk hooked on the shark-tooth Waianes, root-smell hanging in the rain forest, Honolulu damp with flowers: torchy African tulip, St. Thomas trees like giant, sorry, missionary lilacs, night-blooming cereus that have had their night, that shrivel at dawn like yellow sea-anemone a child collected on a…
As a boy I dreamed of striking out from earth into the black unbreathable not-even-nothing of outer space. As far as the awe of dreams allowed, I went. The earth dropped away like a turquoise ring into a bottomless lake. I was terrified but keen for adventure. I kept on until I came to a…
I'm not sure where it all began. Perhaps it was "Hure, hare, hure, commencement," a game my sisters Debo and Decca organized when we were quite small. Or, I should say, when they were quite small. I was never small and they always organized all the games. I don't know. Perhaps they were cleverer than…
In that field is open summer. Under a copper-beech three mares graze almost without motion, and the small wind that turns the leaves through the dimensions of gold light does not lift their manes. One sorrel, the chestnut half in shadow, the white in sun who snuffs at a pink-flowered weed, arching down her neck:…
Pigs loom, grunting by the shed, embarrass the decent farmer, lathered in his bathroom window. Dipped in pine-tarred water at 158°, the bleached carcasses shave so easily, bristles falling over the blade. He was beaten once for tossing diseased chickens into the pen when he'd been told to bury them. Pigs develop tastes. He can't…
Imagine a mathematic of superstition, a logic to the blue and the salt, variables of water and wind, a copper-colored ring around the two-faced moon. Imagine a formula or being at home in your life. Home could be next door to Coalman's Loam & Gravel where on Sundays Baptists gather to praise the word of…
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