Did you ever see stars? asked my father with a cackle. He was notspeaking of the heavens, but the white flash in his head when a fist burstbetween his eyes. In Brooklyn, this would cause men and boys to slapthe table with glee; this might be the only heavenly light we’d ever see. I never…
At the airport the conveyor bears small yachts shaped like luggageinto the distance, and I am headed, when they let me pass through the X-ray arch, toward home. There is a distancesometimes greater than this between us, since you are in another state—gaseous, solid, liquid, light—and I admitI am often absent lately from whatever is…
By wings whose shapesare but half a heart? Feathers oiled with country clubs andgasps of delight? Not for thesethe sandhill craneshakes her beaded voice. Gauche and gangrene,she is the gatekeeper of gibe, a cement-gray song edged and pocked in grassyfields, a frock of scarletover her eye, her own letterto time and her maker; a bow, a leap, all a…
(A small, and still isolated, incident inNew York shows what can happen if authenticauthority in social relations has broken downto the point where it cannot work any longereven in its derivative, purely functional form.A minor mishap in the subway system—thedoors on a train failed to operate—turnedinto a serious shutdown on the line lastingfour hours and involving more than fiftythousand passengers because when thetransit authorities asked the passengers toleave the defective train, they simply…
Thierry I am here because it’s too crowded on the other side of this sentence.Take this page—where do I place myself? At the beginning or the end,or in the middle? Or maybe in the corner. I can’t be everywhere, that’swhat I’ve been told my entire life. They say we have a choice, but wheredo you…
In late summer I swim across the lake to the stand of reedswhich grows calmly in the foot-deep water on the other side. It is like going to a florist’s shopyou have to take your clothes off to get to, where nothing is for sale and nothing on displaybut some tall, vertical green spears, and…
The kind Italian driver of the bus to Romeinvited her to his house—she was obviouslyhungry—and gave her sandwichesand raped her. All those years ago—she smileswhile telling it—contemptuous,somehowof her younger self, who drags behind her like a can.Grammar is greatbut who will write the sentence that includesthe story of the damage to her soul and how…
They’d traveled one by oneon their knees beneath the earthto be gathered at the station to be given robes and haloes and official papers. And a bus ticket each to the roadside motelin Ohio that heldthe reservations in their names, where those who’d been slain before them were waiting. Can these be the right martyrs?…
And every morning the sun comes up. And the pretty coffee in a cup. And a bird meowing outside in a tree. And, on the ceiling, the water stain of England made sadder by singing in a minor key. The size of a coffin, and full of bees.Shadow on a tractor, mowing the field.The cat,…
No products in the cart.