That which you made me do I did. That which you made me say I said. Now the blame, like oil over water, spreads, and so our life together that began in vows—the licensed oath— has leased itself back to us both: what we knew and couldn’t know what our words no longer show.
for Cathal Ó Searcaigh, granted one wish by the fairy youth, wants nothing, so help me, but one dropdead kiss from the youth, but how can he forget Jack Nolan who wished away Death for all mankind, Falcarragh’s own Jack Nolan whose uncharacteristically generous wish trapped Death in his fisherman’s duffle, a large-hearted wish…
For a week it’s been spinning the tale of a thing about to believe its new body. Today the eyes are gone, the center split where form sidestepped its own riven length. That’s just likeness hinged to the tree. A souvenir. A transparency. To find it now make a space in the ear in the…
When my grandmother left the house to live with my aunts, my grandfather, who spent so much time in the sugar cane fields, returned daily to the emptiness of the clapboard house he built with his own hands, and he sat in the dark to eat beans he cooked right in the…
in memory of F.C. (1965–1991), who died of AIDS complications But there under the dark eaves of rain forest, we found Broughtonia, its crimson petals aflame, its yellow throat, veins hinting purple, rising to a sanguine corolla surrounded by sepals as crinkled as mourning crepe. We followed a path lengthened slash by slash, the islanders…
Because the world insists on still giving and giving at six, mastering addition seemed its natural complement, a kind of cataloguing the earth’s surplus. I loved the fat green pencil shedding graphite as I pressed rounded threes, looping eights into the speckled yellow newsprint. Loved, too, the sturdy, crossed bars of the plus sign, carrying…
after a painting by Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Come with me, toward the leafless trees. See the way they lean, dazed with fog and grief as they seek out one another in the haze? Isn’t that how we are able to go on—by believing all that matters will one day be revealed? That is why…
It wasn’t exactly raining but a little wetness still dribbled down. I had been reading and sorrowing and set out with the dogs as an antidote. They went ahead snuffling in the leaf plaster. Despite the steady snick of my clippers boletus mushrooms kept popping soundlessly out of the ground. How else account for the…
The angle of the postman’s cap looked like he’d dressed himself in dark, the darkness, say, that’s lurching from his mouth, where teeth should be, a smile like charcoal, awkward on this full- grown man, but safer for his world where fuchsia picket fences float above a lumpy car that trails a cautious, chastened string…
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