In the orchards we would take A rolled-up newspaper and light it, And shove this torch into a wasps’ nest. In a moment the hive Would be thick with dead wasps. Only one or two flying out of the fire. * * * Now, when I walk in the shade of these trees, I know they…
Unhealthy nymph you come toward me with glitter of decadence sequin drenched blue angel with hectic flush and slanting eyes hard bodied doll tough hands chalked dry you pump, rise drum against the membrane like an infant’s head against the bag of waters held at twelve o’clock the limits of the law What are you…
Once she had been a photographer. Now as she hears the shutter click across the room, too loud, Helen wonders why it should be her husband who takes these family pictures when she is the one with the skills. She knows what the finished pictures will show: a stylishly thin woman, her four handsome sons…
I hear typing so I go over to see what my wife is writing. There is something like a museum about her tonight, a feeling of great space and flames that burn unseen, inside houses in the nineteenth century. I suppose she can hear hooves go past, outside. I suppose that she can sit by…
The game of baseball is not a metaphor and I know it’s not really life. The chalky green diamond, the lovely dusty brown lanes I see from airplanes multiplying around the cities are only neat playing fields. Their structure is not the frame of history carved out of forest, that is not what I see…
I was old enough to know I wouldn't want to hear. But I didn't know what I would find out. So, I went along for the ride. The first colored person I knew was my maid, Marion. She had baggy eyes, baggy breasts, and a bad complexion. My mother made Marion tunafish sandwiches every day…
Road, hog, assassin, mirror. Some of its favorite words, which are breath. Or handwriting: the long tail of the ‘y’ disappear- ing into a barn like a rodent’s, and suddenly it is winter after all. After all what? After the ponds dry up in mid August and the children drop pins down each canyon and…
Black summers have baked the yellow stone. Now, wall and earth inseparable: a thickly floored hole. Fat dress-and-scarf-drenched woman. Under a grey stone a lizard squints. Past here are watches But now, in the simmer of a weekly afternoon, A small drum, answering the shofarm here, where Women dumped their babies on the pointed rock….
Poor Bernie, Ted thought, as rain thudded against the car like rotten fruit. Watching it stream and bubble on the windshield he promised himself not to complain about it lest Bernie's feelings be hurt. He was anxious to impress this on his wife. Poor Bernie, he said aloud. Things never work out the way he…
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