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  • Rereading Old Writing

    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 Man in the Common

    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…

  • The Long Repetitions

    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…

  • A Boy

    His arms are thin in the lamplight on the long table. Floods of yellow and amber light holding the June roses in suspension with him, his tan touched with a few scabs of baseball. A bead of blood has loosened itself from his wrist and glints like a ladybug as he turns it in the…

  • Melancholia

    In Durer’s Melancholia a spell nails things to the floor, nothing can travel. The woman with idle wings sits to brood, laurel leaves in her hair. Some tools are spewed at her feet—hammer, saw, nails. A marble block in the background waits for a chisel. In the clutter of the room the hourglass glares like…

  • Honoré Daumier

    The absurd has its reasons which the reason      absorbs: now the outlines throb when you draw, and the decade of sight left you      will leave you diligently vulnerable to the long littleness of life,      who revealed so little else— for you humanity was definable      broadly by its weaknesses or narrowly as your crayon could encroach…

  • Hurricane Watch

    The power was off. We cleared dishes from the table. Shutters crashed against the windows. Below us, in the lake, the minnows were in a frenzy. Limbs cracked like knuckles—one great trunk smashed to the ground. Leaves flew past, pasted themselves to the panes. Somewhere, my father was on a train. The blue walls quaked,…