When I arrive and Roethke rumbas in a green fedora. Hands are strangers large as pockets light. Mine float. They scratch my groin. I scatter punctuation. Rain. Another, quieter room. Allen Ginsberg holding court. ancient poet luminary poor as tinder. The threadbare coat, the light. Shining through thin threads. I’m glad you’ve come he says,…
Looking back, the language scribbles. What’s hidden, having been said? Almost everything? Thrilling to think There was a secret there somewhere, A bird singing in the heart’s forest. Two people sitting by a river; Sunlight, shadow, some pretty trees; Death dappling in the flowing water; Beautiful to think about, Romance inscrutable as music. Out of…
The day lets go its frozen pose of blue and grey. Snow falls, white on white, wrapping the town in its cocoon. Such calm in snow. The air no longer hungers for each step. My puffs of breath lead me to the Common, its web of stone paths just covered. I scan the scene. No…
Trains in the night. In the morning waves reach beyond water. Animal faces appear at the window muttering cries from the pen. Fences fastened in dirt topple over. Unafraid the woman walks away from the man she loves, the man who does not love her. She is surprised at her own bravery, decides over and…
MASTHEAD Directors DeWitt Henry Peter O'Malley Coordinating Editor for This Issue Lloyd Schwartz CONTRIBUTORS STEVE ALBERT is a poet and fiction writer from California, now living in Cambridge. FRANK BIDART'S books of poetry are Golden State (Braziller) and The Book of the Body (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). He was the Coordinating Editor of Ploughshares 2/4….
my husband looks at me some evenings as if I were about to leave his home. it’s a stolen look one I’ve grown familiar with this last month. it’s there in his eyes over breakfast but more frequently and lingeringly after dinner. he’ll sit in the grey leather chair his legs crossed his flannel trousers…
I have this witch’s dream sitting in a wicker chair in a green garden our friends are sitting there I have on a satin purple slip I love the way it feels on my bare hot skin and god am I even in my inner ear the small of my back don’t tell me I…
Seamus Heaney has been at Harvard University teaching two writing courses during the Spring semester. The interview took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Michael Mazur's studio with James Randall and Seamus Heaney seated on a couch, tape recorder between them, and Michael Mazur working on sketches of Heaney for a monotype to be used for…
He is pulling blood in, trying to be strong in the mirror. The word gives him trouble and he pushes it away, wondering, what will come now? who will come? All his adventures are in his mind. The large muscles serve no one. He dreams of Germany and hopes to be a policeman. He would…
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