Article

He held her as she wavered      and grabbed tight to the handlebars,            a woman in her fifties, learning it for the first time,      both of them, I was sure, in love.            Watching them like that, I thought I knew nothing about love,      nor how to be alone.            All that spring he taught…

There goes today with its bucket of leaves, its deep blue bottomless sky, the lights switched on at dusk like wishes for night to rise. Now comes sleep and with it my father walking through aspens in Colorado, hands filled with gifts for the horses who carry him anywhere. They are not shy. They belong…

The loops of our two names are woven into a petaled, autonomous shelter. Leisure beneath the veins of the roof, thin green stalks about us. A gathering of six-legged creatures, a long-tailed ichneuman, an ant lion part of the troop. It is noon. The rest of the corps arrives, platoons and divisions, baskets stuffed with…

You sprawl in the chair in the midnight kitchen, striking matches in the ashtray, igniting vodka, until the light has fled like a name a family only whispers from the years before Korea and my birth. You rise to pack your canvas duffle on the dressel by my sleeping aunt, though perhaps as you ready…

Awakened by fire engines Passing neighborhoods lit by tvs, I watch the old stars Through the window screen, Hear the rustle of blinds and shades In the quiet the sirens leave. Along a one way street Watches in a pawn shop tick And bakers in a factory bake The night air sweet with yeast. Their…

In last week’s New York Times I read the First Lady’s announcement from the White House: a joke writer was hired until it all blew over, the enemy’s cheap shots about expensive gowns and china. Appease your critics with a laugh, she said. Disarm them. Meanwhile the paper’s full of arms deals. “Capability” is spread…