Somewhere in the midwest crabapples are falling on a new Buick; crabapples are littering the sidewalk and a man is muttering darkly to himself. It’s not pleasant to contemplate these crabapples. Ordinarily he’d be having fun oiling the doors of his Buick in perfect silence. But not today. No sir. Not with these crabapples falling….
It’s no use being afraid of snakes. You can walk for days and not see one, Over saddle and switchback Of the tame, toothless Appalachians. Then suddenly he’s there, all there. In a soft, explosion of color His sharp skull flashes out From more permanent, duller Backgrounds of schist and slate. The realest thing for…
That autumn the baby died father took us on a cruise. My sister and I wore twin bonnets. We stuffed our fingers into the mouths of dolls whose eyes stared like the sea that goes black and forever. Nights we drifted; the festive strung lights were a christmas we danced inside. Mother’s apricot skirt swirled…
I have beaten the blank mat, but the name that tolls from the wide throat of the crowd is Nadia, Nadia. Magic is not earned and is not fair. After repeated labor against the body’s meat and strict bone, still with each leap or press or stretch or somersault, my flesh in its new attitude…
He was not sick a day in his life till that day, then he was sick all at once, past hope of recovery. Except as an itch that woke him more regularly each night, sending him back of the barn to urinate among the gelded beeves and be alone, cancer flourished in his bones a…
There is a face — smooth, hard, a knot of polished wood. Each night it burns in my hands. Wood is smooth and has no breath. Tap it again and again. It sounds like someone approaching. He lies at the bottom of a lake, I float above. Unable to lift him to this surface, unable…
In the morning on the edge of the bed you can hardly catch your breath, like an emphysemiac, Eric Severeid pondering the edge of the abyss. before you the clock, a glowing menu, while at your side your wife still lies, the sailor in the myth eyes closed, transported on a…
I He smoked those stubby black cigars my father smoked and like my father would not smile for photographs. But mounting a horse the color of straw or rising at dawn to tour the blossom littered fields he paid the camera little mind, and kept his coattails turning to history. That spring the sound of…
for Dee Dog, Dreaming There is always something; and past that something Something else: Jarrell’s words lingering as late in our house the wild skid of a car overrides the night’s news, snow icing blind the world. I nod from room to room, remembering all these somethings come to nothing. I come to you in…
No products in the cart.