The door slams. The corpse sits up. The dog says, “Don’t look at me.” They have planned this in Hollywood. They have planned your elopment with the boy with silver cufflinks. They have planned his mother’s anger, the snobbishness caught in her teeth, gooey as a night of bile. When you unbutton your blouse —…
The word was somber. What it might have meant, its origin and weight, uncertain under shade as the dark face below the ratified sombrero. Eyes it gave the lie to overshadowed where sun wheels higher than missing trees. The hoopoo’s lim downcurving bill complements the Old World crest, flamboyant color in the unitary sun. Signs…
Put my glad rags in a cardboard box — This old jiggerboo never grew mature. Is everthing in its place except me? Don’t be surprised; I called all day And the only person I could reach was The operator; and it’s a sorry day when Nothing is coming down but your foot. And how deep…
( – The Horse Latitudes are a region of unusual calm, lying in the North Atlantic Ocean. When sailing ships were becalmed there, the crew used to throw overboard cargo and horses. Thus lightened, the boat could take advantage of whatever wind there might be.) What does the sea want, my clothes, my keys, my…
Don’t ever hold on to anything! Let it go! Let it go! And you’ve got it. -Claire “Don’t lay your trip on me, ladies. I don’t care if you’ve got a headache, a muscle hurts, your old man has split with another chick, or what your dreams are. . . Drop your shoulder! Stop…
“I’m so tired of empty promises I could just blow up,” she said on First Avenue where you knew it was spring because the sirens sound light-hearted, and Holly was drinking her Campari with soda. Personally, I had a Bullshot, and drank it like a man personally on his way to the gas chamber. But…
A baby, transparent blue, crawls up my shoulder, claws digging into me. I gave birth to it. And now I have to take the baby home and show the father. He won’t like it when he sees the film on his son’s eyes, when he sees this blue furless cat as his only inheritor.
Richard Yates was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1926. He graduated from the Avon School in 1944, served in the last years of World War II, and until 1952 worked at a variety of jobs, ranging from newspaper rewrite man to freelance ghost writer to publicity writer. He has taught at the New School…
Each face strikes a different hour in the heart Days last tolling will be your’s (Its profile’s panels on which are sleep-lacquered eyes The golden flights and returns of an unblemished wound) Like a blind person reading smoke signals, I touch The face foretold as your’s (It’s like a boney honey in the sunset, pale…
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