(For Jeffrey Atlas) High in a tower above Manhattan We talked about the end of communal life. You said, “The incorporation of America At best makes nomads of us all, at worst Spare parts for machines.” I said, “The neutron bomb Is the quintessence of our age, buildings Must stand, people can be replaced.” You…
The widows forget nothing. When they open a window, the wind is the breath of their anger knocking things over. The bare stones blind them. If they close their eyes a dark space enters. They keep it under their eyelids when they sleep. In the morning the space surprises them in their beds. It stands…
First you close your eyes. Then you hold your breath. Then, when it gets too heavy to hold, you let it go. And it drops to the floor like a stone. But without a sound. And then your mother comes to the door and calls you, saying, “Come out here this instant! Your breakfast is…
The air can still inspire a kind of tinny speech down their whole strung-out stagger. Late March, and they're still awed at the quick-freeze of winter. Like a madman jawing to nobody in sight, one's telling how he keeps getting kidnapped. Another's been hit-and-run, the hubcap's here to prove it, and a third, caught out…
This curve of the pitcher, thrust of the handle against my palm, this lip where I run my finger over the edge has no regard for function or for thirst. And what if it leaks? The imperfect body in its worn-out skin. Salim can fix it. Thirty years in his shop in the Old City…
If you drive east out of Centerville on Highway 50, about seven or eight miles down the road you pass the waterworks. Go another mile or so and you've crossed Swan Creek; if it's summertime the stream will be low but steady, while in winter it will seem like a lake. Sometimes from the bridge…
It is a soft afternoon. Spring. Blue and pale green. Just a little breeze occasionally laces the silvery warmth of the sun. They are in the yard at the back of the house, standing on the graveled drive that divides the lawn and her flower beds from the working yard of packed dirt and rough…
They say they'll need the dental records to prove he is the same person but I tell them the child that was me has gone no- where to live. He hears his name call ing me out of the darkness; he is this tangled clump of weeds beneath the snow. He comes every- where with…
for R. F. One whose son has died has to forgive the boys who still live, when they come up the street slowly in a ragged group, talking, three with mitts, one with the ball. Should forgive, and does. And a man whose marriage has broken under his hard pressures or hers has to blink…
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