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  • Personal History

    Brawling in the bush with himself our schnapps-bloated German punches free to the sidewalk, mock-orange blossoms in both fists. His bright yellow blazer, a sign of bad conscience — for we know his taste is good, and bottomless — turns every human head. It's twilight, his only happy hour. Truculent finch back from the feeder,…

  • Pike Certificate

    Name: Esox lucius. Condition: sunlight splits the teeth into multicolored gleamings; a phallic rust obtains for the entire clotted length of tailless body. Comment: its Kafkaesque grin encircles a single stone of quartzlike mauve: a charm.

  • That Time, That Country

    In the country that was a time I spoke in tongues, a glossolalia of joy, like birdsong in Beethoven’s Sixth. It was March in that country. At the sign of the Lamb and Lion, a chambermaid flings open a window. That was the time I shed the baggage of extra flesh, to feel frankness on…

  • Walking With The Pig

    This is not a Perigord Of summer truffles: We walk in snow. Ham-deep in white, He stops abruptly to nose The drifts beside the door. I cannot remember What grew there, If anything. But he roots down, eager, Past winter, Into his certainty, And comes up green— Breathed, honking delight, Chewing stems of the mint.

  • Forgotten Music

    Here, the storm-darkened house: Candles lit against the gloom. We're not afraid of the dark really; Just hitting furniture moving About. The old music stand Rears lyric arms against the sky. (A room needs some height) No one plays any more But we found a lovely folio Psalter — Portobello, I think. Cantate Domino, Canticum…

  • The Eighth Day

    I I was always interested in myself, but I never thought I went back so far. Joan and I talked about birth almost as soon as we met. I told her I believed in the importance of early experience. "What do you mean by early," she asked, "before puberty, before loss of innocence?" "Before age…

  • Flamingos

    You could see mountains and gardens in the name almost: Cuernavaca. But not our garden, hill-hidden, notched in a valley higher than the city. It was ours after a long dinner only when we discovered the ancient stability of three: triangle and tripod. I'd never seen so many waiters, perched in nooks and corners like…

  • Hog-Killing Weather

    There are those images that lie around at the back of your mind, not demanding much attention and rarely getting any, sort of fossilized, as you might say. Then one morning, a bitter November morning, something catches the edge of your eye, still smoky with sleep, and you sit up in bed and squint into…