He wonders why you keep postponing the party when you have to do all the cooking. One night, it rains for three weeks. Brown water drips from the ceiling and the coq au vin tastes like plaster. His guests raise an eyebrow and he wonders why you don’t just serve the mousse, unflappable as Vogue…
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…
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…
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,…
(For W.C. Williams and Hoyt Wilhelm) to govern so the concrete in motion with the most tenuous of grips to force as much by will as act the erratic to hold within a predetermined form to summon with an easy minimalist grace the capacity repeatedly to baffle: it is the haven of the fortunately old,…
A dusky cloud, a tree, a giant (caught on the line of magnification) deeply whorled hand from the group at the center. A picturesque little house with watersteps and a boat, momentarily forsaken. You can see its boatman down by the lagoon with two others, pointing deeper into the painting with a shrewd air of…
Did your mother ever wear a hat with a whole bird’s nest growing on it, or a dress patterned with naked bodies? Remember how long the street seemed then, how you stepped behind her to investigate a fence post, shop window, blade of grass, anything to let you fall behind? Perhaps she was an immigrant,…
Siste, viator Bereaved of mind by a weird truck, Our fraternal philosopher To whom a Spring snow was mortal Winter— a wild driver in the best Of cases, on the margins of Communicability— exchanged a bad Appointment in New Hampshire For a grave in the Jewish Cemetery In Waltham, Massachusetts. Across The street…
In this new town, I need to know where to buy grain, grapefruits by the case, a round of cheese. Neighbors offer a way of making sauerkraut and soap. But I mostly like the words. And those I meet who might be friends have children now full grown. I want to meet whole generations. I…
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