They collided south of Nashville, J. Fielding Mount, the accidental man, and his counterpart, Malvina T., the accidental woman. She was headed north and he was headed south, and the switching systems that operate in the senses of these fugitive types failed somehow in the darkness. Or possibly it was an accident meant to happen….
“The people need poetry.” That voice That was last heard asking for warm Clothes and money, also knew the hunger We all have for the gold light The goldfinch carries into the air Like a tang of crushed almonds. “The Kremlin mountaineer” scaled The peak of atrocity, seeking The cold final barbiturate Tablet from the…
We were walking through the shadows of the Adirondacks. I saw so clearly that unfamiliar country, our sudden friendship. You said it couldn’t be that way again, walking that field, the small hands of birch leaves fluttering in the still line of sunset. The one night without a moon seems now the end of summer….
Harrison had eaten a fly in spite of himself. Others had bounced off his goggles or his Adam's apple. He hadn't exactly swallowed the bug, but he had a grim hunch that some of the horny parts had found their way down his gullet. He spat, making a sort of Bronx cheer, then slowed and…
Once, there, music was playing from the radio. Adagio. It was the day they slaughtered Annie Campbell’s hens and Maggie Marley’s marmalade cats. I put myself to the test; to write a poem before the music stopped. A false field of real tension Opened then and I bent to hear those old women crying as…
Susan, whose father is dead, is thinking as she waits for the conversation between her mother and me to end: Why didn’t he die instead of my father? Why should his daughter have a father and not my father’s daughter? Must I from now on feel as if absent in myself, where my father reigned…
First I was 76. We had been assigned numbers to be taped on our helmets, front and back, with masking tape. But on the first morning I lost my number. A cadre member walked down each long file of men, standing in front of one, then the next, then the next, down the line. This…
Here are the directions by which You, like the others, should find me. When you come to the central square You will find a statue jump up Like a shout that ends in the point Of his finger. Turn your back And walk downhill. Pass the beggar At the towngate, but give him nothing. He’s…
I am sorry, she would say. That’s all right, I would murmur. She stood with her back towards me, my nose nearly touching. The train lurched to the right, giving me the space to breathe in freely, and I waited for the swing back when I would have to lift her from my chest, with…
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