Watching it move up the valley in its plentitudebetween the mountains and me, the rainsoaking into each particle of soil, glisteningon the tip of each leaf, like the old mythof a god who sees our every thought and deed—impossible, but why not, if rain can do this?Rain: one thing and a billion things. Listen as…
A memorial erected over a void. Usuallyfor a living person who just vanished, butwhose death seems indisputable. Begin with a shovel, an empty rectangularcake of earth. Begin with a word, a grail to extinguish all hope. Begin with the storyof a child disappearing between his fifth-grade class and the bus stop—baseball bat and glovediscarded on…
“Being Property Once Myself. I have a feeling for it …”—Lucille Clifton
I never saw my mother hold her husband’s hand or stroke his blue-blazered shoulder.Compliments were reserved for thin women and handsome priests. London and her lasttwo houses brought brightness to her eyes. Her greatest affection she savedfor a succession of Scotties, a breed known to be aloof. Each one she fed into obesity,half her plate scraped into the dog’s…
There is nowhere for the wind to blow through the grassthe way it blows through words to make them prayer. Not here. Not after harvest, just stems left,and seed pods, and leaves. All of it a wick as wide as there is landscape. Some farmers burn their fields,and the fire is a fist perpetually closing,…
rockets and rocks, dingbats,all-nite coffee and gas-ups, flyingsaucers and neon Welcome to Los Vegas, starburstsand steel beams, boldupsweeps: a future. She wants to be atomicand glass, Hollywoodand Jetsons, wants a future beyond this pastconstantly hardeningin her path. Every time she makessomeone stone, theymonument, outlast her— and when she looksout of the glassand watches parking lots…
arrived suddenly, left suddenly.In between, we stalked each other, omen to omen, panting.One of us bore a gold cuff around her neck. One of us sportedblack stockings. Each breath coated our chests in fear—anythingcould happen. Any second could turn on you, twist—uncatchable. Soon I faced nothing but crushed salvia, bent grass.That skinny, sharp-toothed creature vanished…
June 24, 2022 In the skyscraper hotel, in a conferenceroom, in between sessions about news,I nod my head at the woman talking,act like I’m following. I’ve learnedin a panel this week that: I am notlistening. No one listens. One cannotlisten. But I can see beyond this woman’shead to the skyscraper across the street,and the tiny…
Say my mom lived in northern Maine, where school stopped for the fall harvest. Say my grandmother insists every county kid picked, even the third graders. Left at five in the farmer’s truck. All day, trailed the digger with baskets. Say it’s always rankled me: the clammy truck bed in pre-light, the baskets waiting at…
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