for E.B., 1911-1979 We had to hurry to catch the open silver train that jingled the rim of the park. It was early, Sunday, summer-hazy, and we imagined we were the only ones around: only also the quick Catalonian boys — jumped from the red hibiscus hedge, and ran along the rail, and grabbed expertly…
He told me, at eleven, that he was angry at women and though he didn't blame them exactly, he'd been driven to the point where he just made himself presentable enough to get laid once in awhile. I thought he was very presentable and I wasn't surprised when I found out later in the evening…
Beside the rocking horse, for which she has grown too large, and the shirts that hang still on the line, she looks down. The face is dour and pale with something private, and will not admit the journalist, up from Boston for country color. How well she knows these hills — green receding unaccountably to…
“Surely in a brutal job-ridden, Puritanical, Billy Grahamized America, poetry of pleasure, describing the six or seven lovely things you did that day, is a victory of sorts.” —Robert Bly For instance planting the seed called six or seven, lovely in itself, borderline, especially considering the six or seven layers of sleep we had…
Essentially, he wrote, my life has been a burst of failure. Success lies in a political act, but the best he could think of at the moment was sabotage, putting sugar in his neighbor's gas tank. The Mercedes would shine on the outside, but the guts would be corroded. He considered his need to find…
The boats like huge bright birds sail back when someone calls them; the small campers struggle out and climb the hill to lunch. I see the last dawdler vanish in a ridge of trees. The whole valley sighs in the haze and heat of noon. Far out a fish astounds the air, falls back into…
It’s not a month for Republicans, All business, baffled inside their suits The color of moles. The wind Shakes out the blue hair of matrons Who suck their thin cheeks pale as if At the mercy of pigfeet and banjos. I’m confused too but take heart in The first crocus wobbling out Like the precarious…
To whom it should concern: Lucky for me you're not the worrying sort. Lucky for you I don't write often, considering the miseries I'm heir(ess) to. Also my terror and loss. What I need to know is, Where do I/we stand? Grammar and punctuation aside – for I have not for-gotten those shockwaves you suffer…
— for J.H.W. The house sits like a hat too small for the bald hill newly scraped and planted with tentative grass. In the picture you took to ponder, to decide whether to buy, the poplar that plumes the ground like a giant swaying peacock feather is almost invisible, a sprouting barely alive. Scotch pine…
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