Poetry

I had torn the quads in both legs and had to be poured into the back seat so when we parked at Home Depot, I was being slid out on a plastic sheet when a red sports car pulled in next to us, the door swung open and a hand cast out a folded wheelchair…

Mom has already made arrangements for a spot inside the churchyard wall among the old Yankee slates, some fallen, and the granites from foreign places, tilted by frost. A mason sets them straight again each spring. Perennials for the formal beds accepted with gratitude; no other plantings allowed. Cut flowers may be laid on the…

You’d think he was nervous the way he fits and starts. His skittery dodges, dipping below the visible, make us wait           for a scratch on our eye which comes to show he’s gone again elsewhere. How does he find his way? you said, and I saw night close in           like a room with…

I woke up this morning with my mouth full of words Like “Crenellated battlements,” and cranciousness And bicycles with “derailleur” and flywheels and tappets. These words must be escapees from where they grew bored. Stuck in the same old sentences they decided to break out And now they are fugitives in my mouth and ears….

Avila, 1982 When the civil guards approached me and asked me for my papers, I recalled the face of a sunny saint being disemboweled on the rack. Widows in perennial black, addicts of prayer, find comfort here the way monks in hair shirts must take to penance, or me, addled in my blissed-out days in…

I didn’t know then how couples flow into the space around each other— how Max’s sweet exuberance was only made possible by Rose’s bitter chill. Who knew what that whole generation of refugees had gone through? I knew nothing about them— only that Max had been to Alaska, had prospected for gold. Said words like…

Just because you think a man is dead doesn’t mean you should leave him. Really, the dead have a lot of advantages over the living. Think about your dad. How much better you get along with him now that he’s passed. It’s time’s way. And why in the end everything turns out okay. A lot…

In 1936, when a tramp knocked on the farmhouse door and asked, please, for bread and butter, Kate hacked him a slice from the loaf she baked last Wednesday, and spread on it the Holstein butter she churned Saturday morning. He thanked her, Ma’am, and walked down the road looking for Help Wanted, for a…

translated from the Spanish by Ilan Stavans   Powerful— but a grain of sand, a fly’s foot, half a milligram of dust entered your right eye and the world became dark and foggy. Streets became staircases, buildings were covered with smoke, your love, your son, your dinner plate changed color, turning into palm trees or…