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Morning In The City

driving down East avenue towards downtown cardinal swooping over the car, horsechestnut flowers erect & white.      I told Jay at the bank I saw horsechestnuts in flower over the weekend, she said, “I remember when I was little we used to gather the nuts, now you don’t find them any more.” She went on but…

The Boy In The Ditch

When I was a child of four or five, I fell out of my parents’ car one day, and they drove off and left me. I went to sleep weeping in the ditch. Later my mother came by at ten at night, and nudged me with her rhinocerous horn, found me dead, or still alive,…

Mother’s Picture

From a photograph on the bedroom wall, you look toward what we cannot see. The shadow of silver trembles in its journey to nowhere. You look past us without words, a young woman we never knew. When light comes in the room, the uncompromising bed does not translate your suffering. You stare from inside the…

If We Had Never Married

What if we had never married, what if just before the wedding, foreseeing the pain we would cause each other, we broke it off, goodbye. I see us meeting again after 10 years, each of us married to people we like but don’t love;      there is a deep, sober longing in your eyes, an airy…

The Stump

     The stump stands where it is easily overlooked until you come close. It is the size of a gray cannonbarrel, pointed up. Or an elephant’s leg with the body shot off. Where bark is gone, something sleek and silvery shows, as when one glimpses an intestine. The stump feels rough to the fingers as a…

Passing

It is Spring Already you relax in a cotton skirt Passing thru the mountains is a strong feeling Fields plowed, new wood split, the hawk floating Puffs of softwood in the grey hills A river runs with snowmelting A small bridge neatly built to get by There is a pleasure in such places The old…

The Melting

     An old woman likes to melt her husband. She puts him in a melting device, and he pours out the other end in a hot bloody syrup, which she catches in a series of little husband molds.      What splatters on the floor the dog licks up.      When they have set she has seventeen little husbands….