I flick a switch—out flashes the light bulb,like God snapping his fingers in my face:Wake up, Pumpkinhead. I’ve been running aroundhalf-naked, with the rest of America,wearing only a credit card and a cashmere scarf.Arf, arf. Yesterday, I went to Circuit City’sgoing-out-of-business sale to revel in the fall of capitalism,but all I saw were the sad…
Before they put Cousin Gladys inside the ground in a cornrow of fair-skinned Creole men, I sat in her funeral mass imagining two shadows dancing in the swish of a swift moving blade that slit her dreams in half and sent her father strolling across the cane field like a land-bending river, turning a page…
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…
for Linda Gregg Safe in the light along the bank Being in believing No name Only being On the bank radiant and blank Safe watching and seeing On the brink Of the light Blank No blame in being Waiting then breathing in being Seeing Singing Let my voice …
“No Loitering” reads the sign by the school.But what about a school that offers coursesIn loitering as an art, each class designedTo break another link in the argumentThat we ought to be somewhere else by nightfall,Ought to start now if we’re to arrive on timeFor the meeting of those in need of a truthWe’ve distilled…
You are a wretch and a leech and a dirtyold man and have been trying to pushinside me for years. Well, come on then.There’s something about the plum warm air. Usually at this time of day I don’twant to see people. Usually when I’m onthe old swings I think about the manwho stopped his car…
It was a straw light, a blond light, a water light in the window when I looked outside and saw it was still daylight, flooding the hot, white room of her death that had been the hot, white room of her maternal loneliness. The heel of my hand hard on her sternum as her heart,…
for my mother, Veronica Cazier (1955-1991) The undertaker gripped my hand. I said I wanted Dairy Queen. I touched her cheek because I needed proof—and after, Dairy Queen. It’s what I asked for every day: to go to Dairy Queen. Worse than dead, she wasn’t quite herself. I pictured Dairy Queen. I’d finished second grade…
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