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Hope in Kingston drives a Volvo that rattles. We’ve missed our turn to the hotel: the soothing quiet flourishing palms, veranda columns, fresh paint and the bulldog asleep under the table while his Aussie      master nurses the last night’s drink. No yams or jerky pork except on Wednesday by the pool, white jackets and a…

To be on Zurichberg (the price of gold climbing faster than the #5 tram) to be on Zurichberg where they buried Joyce between the Dolder and the zoo in earshot of a dozen tourist languages and the lions’ roar, to be at Joyce’s grave under a pewter sky returns me to the epiphytes at Kew…

When it snowed hard, cars failed at the hairpin turn above the house. They’d slur off line and drift to a ditch — or creep back down, the driver squinting out from a half- open door, his hindsight glazed by snow on the rear window and cold breath on the mirrors. Soon he’d be at…

For my father In your orange flight suit, you approached the Renault we knew might stall after a hard winter freeze. With your pilot’s hand, you turned the engine. When it caught, I ran down the walkway you had shoveled. Cinderella lunch-box under my arm, I climbed in the frozen capsule, and waited for you…

I lived among a people who said, pig, for luck. They might have said stork or      flounder for these beings were familiar to them, as were rat and donkey. But they said, pig. No doubt from ingrained habit. Real pig, fella. Some pig you had, my friend. What pig. Good pig! Hey, have a piggy…

Stilts sink into stiltprints left by the dead child in the soft earth. If his living friend stalks in those holes, if he throws each long crutch stiff-legged ahead of him, will he win the race? One dead foot, one live . . . he hops on bones, a lame pony, a giraffe limping fast…

God said He would destroy Earth’s violent flesh, but spare me. Was there gratitude enough for such a burden? My family blessed Him. They built the ark according to His dimensions, cubit by square cubit. He was specific, demanding gopher wood, three stories pitched within, one window, and two of every creature. Opening a door…

Most ancient Metaphysics, (poor Metaphysics!) All decked up in imitation jewelry. We went for a stroll, arm in arm, smooching in public Despite the difference in our age. It was still the 19th century, she whispered. We were in a knife-fighting neighborhood Among some rundown relics of the Industrial Revolution. Just a little further, she…

We went down to the ocean, wearing the silk hats we wore to the funeral. It was like a party, people drank too much. No one mentioned the dead child. Someone said that the idea for escalators came from the waves. A woman interpreted dreams: a window stood for fear, a wheatfield, fate. I lay…