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…
A sculptor was tapping eyes outwith his chisel, slipping sinewsin the forearm, his patron twitchingin anticipation of the weightof granite sitting on his corpse.I like to walk around the cemeterybecause the inhabitants urge peopleto bring them flowersthough they do nothingand their families argueabout the proper ways to acknowledgethe row of childrenlost to the flu epidemic:…
Canoes and cabins—wood, narrowness, hours. Here’s boat- shed, birth-room, cabin, and coffin on riverbank, made by old craft, arranged like loved toys. A small craft is what I too have, that can float on paper or a voice, whether I scribe it or say it (in what- ever weather or key, alone or with others)…
It was not evening-out jewelry, not twice-a-year jewelry. She slept in it. She always said when she died I would have it but almost certainly never pictured me wearing it: how it would lie an inch below my beard, in the hollow between my clavicles, how the serpentine chain would catch stray hairs on my…
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