However closer it might seem to art— the brightly colored bills, the graceful figures about to waltz off heavy coins—it pays for the gasoline, the decaf and baguette. To use a public toilet costs two francs, a little less than what I give the man without a leg whose sign I understand (another universal language,…
The last spike hammered into the last day meant not one more Chinese laborer would be lowered in a basket down the side of a mountain to separate the mountain from itself with a brand of dynamite that knew its own mind, never hesitating to render asunder whatever the Whiteman’s God had assembled on that…
for Flavio The plucked strings tremble & traverse the heart, back through that other strong muscle singing blood & guilt. Press a finger down & the message changes into blame & beauty, into the scent of a garden rising from peat moss & brimstone… the frets & shaped neck worked & caressed into a phantom…
1. Over and over, I think we have come to a place like this, dead sound stopping the soul in its eager conversations Or, a classical theme repeated over and over interrupted by a voice disguised as human: Please stay on the line Your call is very important to us 2. Don’t know if I…
Two weeks after her husband’s death, just before I left for the airport, my mother said, But how will I get to the lawyer’s on time tomorrow? I said Well you’ll leave the house in plenty of time, she said No no, how will I wake up in time? You’ll set the alarm, Mom, and…
This morning, I turned down Mozart to listen to a mockingbird perched on a wire outside my window. Poor Mozart. Dead, he was much the worse for comparison. But as soon as I lowered the music, the mockingbird flew. He had been listening to Mozart.
When my mother turned sixty, she kissed the invisible stars on the foreheads of her two grown men and deemed them worthy stars The sky, a vaulted blue dome, empties itself and fills Pyongyang with quick, fluid stars Tonight, longing fans out like a silk curtain over an empty room; a girl’s eyes burn…
If I arrived early, I had to listen To hundreds of sewing machines Spiraling their high-pitched arias Up against the mill’s metal shell. Each woman, a soloist withdrawn Into her small cubicle of work, Sang the crazy hope of piecework— Another zipper, another dollar. A wall chart traced their numbers In money’s green line. It…
Has a glow to it, distant and round at the end of the mine shaft, a yellow malignant light. Once seen, it loses power, becomes tarnished and dull as river stones, lifted from their affair with water. Money that has lain too long in the vault no longer has value. The currencies we so believed…
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