Poetry

What one thinks to hold Is what one thinks to know, So comes of simple hope And leads one on. The others there the same With no one then to blame These flowered circles handed. So each in turn was bonded. There the yellow bees will buzz, And eyes and ears appear As listening, witnessing…

The world is always burning, you should fly from the burning if you can, and you should hold your head oh either above or below the dust and you should be careful in the blocks of Bowery below or above the Broome that always is changing from one kind of drunkenness to another for that…

translated from the Spanish by Ilan Stavans Thick, pristine beast, Saint Elephant, sacred animal of perennial forests, sheer strength, fine and balanced leather of global saddle-makers, compact, satin-finished ivory, serene like the moon’s flesh, with minuscule eyes to see—and not be seen— and a singing trunk, a blowing horn, hose of the creature rejoicing in…

Look:             paper screen             blank;             the color white,                         a zero,                         hollow light bulb,           the O            not yet typed. This means                       no imagination                       without                       its imagery. Letters     can appear                                     as bones      (Do not forget the image)             if you     write with     calcium.      Because a subject…

My grandmother’s laughter was an exploding plate, the kind that the traveling salesman said would never break, and he’d fling it against the kitchen floor just to prove his point, and the plate would spin making a kind of high-pitched whine. My grandmother’s laughter was like that, too; almost soundless, like it was running out…

Call it the distance at which certain universals quiver into focus. Call it a kind of motif in the face, a relief in recognition, a cathartic thrill from the comfort of a couch. It’s why a Russian can write of slow death, and an American can feel his scrotum tighten as he reads the tale—even…

Twenty-one once descript ranch-style houses built twenty years ago on a stretch of road that once led to a small-time chicken farm, fresh eggs. Each house dropped on two bare acres. Twenty-one tabula rasas that go wish wish wish wish if racing by with a car window down. No one has ever slammed on their…

artist unknown, Venice It’s an enormous canvas. Beyond rows of oars men stab and thrust, grab each other’s throats, pitch bodies into the water where they sink or else are driven under by keels and pikes. It feels odd standing in this great hall where another tourist is being warned, No photograph. The flash gives…

circa 1946 Just after his release Mas took a psychological test. Three questions he never forgot: Do you think people are out to get you? Do you feel you are being followed? When you see a crowd of strangers walking toward you, do you try to avoid them? To all three he answered yes. And…