carried a baby heart in my pocket neat pink packet that kept beating a quiet music or calling machine with no reception except in my hand that reached from time to time in my pocket and cradled that only connection to what might have been or was it to what might be
They could say what they liked, imitate the way I stuttered the morning Pledge, mashed the alphabet, ask how many chickens 1 plus 3 made, why my brain sat in a corner, in a class of one, refused to read or write, was nailed to my tongue, just as long as they understood that some…
There are thirteen ways to look at a blackbird, but my backyard is not a blackbird, and I am not Wallace Stevens, but I make do with an air conditioning unit and the remnants of an entertainment center, the cherry wood stain fading into sod. I look down at this plot of land like I…
Major or minor, says Baseball Diamond Sutra, what does it matter? The boys of summer know that nirvana is just one inning away. Deep in the outfield, a glove reaches toward sky— fireflies blink on. Over the bleachers, a blank scoreboard announces no wins, no losses.
A wild early April strangeness, crazier than any autumn evening, mild air full of flooding wind, motions of storming branches, a queer, creaky, crying sound way off, as the rain advances— What’s that?—thud of thunder? a big tree going down? the sound of the untime after? No, only the hour of the changes, swift, oceanic,…
Far away from this house, far from Concord, grew orchards where willowy women read scrolls, not stiff-backed books, picked pomegranates, not apples. There, as in fairy tales, houses glittered like gilt-edged books, princes and princesses walked in concord under the sun’s golden apple. But women had to be practical in this house, while the transcendentalist…
The duende got into my head by the back staircase, a gypsy girl-child dressed in red with an old man’s face. My bedroom turned bitter cold. There were banging noises, loud knockings in between the walls. Things left their places. My comb crawled across the bureau, clicking like castanets. My grandmother’s ivory-backed mirror cracked itself…
I’m a cipher. Before that, I was a loose cannon. Before that, I was a zealot. I preached on the street corners. I accosted strangers in subways to tell them I had good news for them. Before that, I worked on the assembly line in a fireworks factory. I stuck fuses in firecrackers and poured…
I have had just about all I can take of myself. —S. N. Behrman There’s a rose bush outside, like the one by the kitchen where Serena some evenings uncovered a pasta dish, beyond exquisite. My new wife and I would inhale its perfumes and sigh. Not like Adamo, her husband, who’d barely touch it….
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