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Lincoln Inward

I      I think I’m lying. Surely one nation divided implies another sad device of history, when I might have said road into ourselves and seemed friendly. This country nags me like a bad excuse, these critical days away from myself demanding accounts, looking at the future in my wife’s sharp face. II      Rutledge, if I…

Photographic Life

No matter what’s the photograph, you’re the man in the center always making sense. Look through the family album, grandma’s first beau, the nice guy who, vaguely, disappeared. Dad in the leather flier’s jacket, a plane called ANZIO BELLE. In the background’s the waist gunner they chipped out of a pile of shells & frozen…

House

You don’t sleep in the house that stands for happiness. You dance to the music of its cracks, flexing your lonely muscles like a priest, pretending your body is a ghost come to haunty yourself. The closets, with luck, remember you as moths or shelves & kiss your open mouth with years that taste like…

I Owe You One

Before it gets lost into the void I want to tell about a letter that got written to the Denver Post years ago. It could have been as long ago as 1947 or 1948. It was apparently written in answer to a letter that had been written earlier and, judging by this letter the earlier…

Why I Am Tormenting You

You are a name I have taken at random from the phone directory. Soon we are exchanging recipes for bread. You confess none of your boy friends chat as well as I do. Your life history is fascinating. I continue to torment you. You tell me this doesn’t matter. Since we’ve started talking you’ve gotten…

The Alchemist

Strindberg shouldered a cross and climbed two giant snow-covered breasts. In the crucible of his palms he said “Lead: turn into gold!” In a rooming house bed he felt the walls closing in, the roses plotting against him. And something else Strindberg did — when he drank pernod or anise, he watched a small child…

In the Colony

He was a piece of trash from the first, not to be taken seriously. He arrived in the colony together with his wife, a heavy woman, and two daughters who were, one later learned, twins but not the identical kind. They seemed good enough girls, quiet and formless, pre-adolescent. But the parents were, each in…

The Space I Occupy

I You lie in the arms of the snow falling outside the window. You looked out a long time, then lay down. I ask if you are cold. You are. Your body gives off the only light, the bones reflecting the bare bulb in the room of your life whose door is locked. *     *      *…