I saw a man in the neighborhood, the neighborhood of my life. Walking, a charming smile — grey jacket, and thought, Do I know that face? It was the old gray jacket I liked, its careless retrograde chic. By little things, our fancy moves. I took a few walks with him. And all fall, yellow…
— for my father I want to do this right, as though there were a right way of walking or sitting still, of staring at stoplights changing or the wincing new moon which, after all, doesn’t care what metaphors we make of it — even a right way to smoke, to hold a cup. I…
"Do you mind if I take my teeth out?" He grinned from the bathroom doorway. Lily leaned against the padded headboard, a fringe of green sheet draped across her breasts. "I try to be a gentleman at all times." His grin broadened to a leer. He would have pinched her buttock again. The left one…
Spring is contained in the chill snow egg of nature. Its coiling green can’t figure out how to die. From my upstairs window I can make out, even at midnight twelve different steeples needling the sky, and white barn roofs, trapezoids, pitches, mansards, all simplified because all snowy — through white lace curtains. There’s more…
My new friend is away for the weekend—the weekend drags by. I want to know exactly what he’s doing. Is the convention exciting? Who are the new people? Is Atlanta as pretty as they say? I’m eager to hear all about it. — What’s he doing now? The weekend drags by. My best friend has…
Growing up in the beautiful lonesome Cumberland mountains, Nadine Florence might almost as well have had no family at all. She gave herself over to solitary speculation or spent time following the progress of the seasons. On her sixteenth birthday she saw the famous moonbow of the Cumberland Falls. The wooden boardwalk led behind the…
The figured wheel rolls through shopping malls and prisons, Over farms, small and immense, and the rotten little downtowns. Covered with symbols, it mills everything alive and grinds The remains of the dead in the cemeteries, in unmarked graves and oceans. Sluiced by salt water and fresh, by pure and contaminated rivers, By snow and…
On the second day of Three Mile Island Annie and I drove southwest at sunset to visit her family in Connecticut. The sun was large and red and hazy and it was easy to imagine the sun was angry. Traffic going our way was fairly thick — all heading more or less toward Pennsylvania. Lemmings,…
They own no dogs; the maid sleeps out. The catches on the windows are those old-fashioned brass ones, butterfly locks. No alarm system or fancy security. He memorized everything Nick had to tell about this job. He pulls on black cotton gloves, soft and close like ladies' gloves. He is no longer just a man…
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