From a sparse handful of seed comes summer— Corn and convolvulus. Scatter of color on the mountainside, near snow. Gone, we want to say, of some longing in the slim afternoon— Though poppies collapse to soft flesh at a touch, heather tolls its little bells . . . • A bee, trapped between windowpanes. Its…
for Angie and Darrell Our family came west from the plains; theirs came north from the desert. We met as neighbors at the intersection of aircraft factories and the Pacific Ocean in Hawthorne, California. “Join us for Thanksgiving,” they said. My husband and I and our two kids crossed the street with a platter of…
Sakti: a feminine power in Hindu thought— creative, perhaps destructive In my small niece’s room, the walls throb pink: pink tights lie, thrown on a flowered spread. Rose frills, mauve, & pearl— Girl colors, blended of blood & milk. A sprawled doll, & through the window fat, voluptuous clouds above the sea. The forms…
“. . . I once took him to the train station in Minden, seventy miles away from our home, and the trains only go through Nebraska at night, the middle of the night, cause they plan it that way, cause I suppose Nebraska’s a dark passage no one wants to make awake and so I…
The Roosevelt Mineral Baths Do you believe the proof is not in the body? In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, John walks among the olive trees by the river, looking for the women who will let him touch their faces with his hands. At night in the park I unwind the…
When the iceberg pulled by a team of white horses comes sliding down the boulevard, the crowd, which had been so festive, whistling, hooting, throwing their hats in the air, grows silent. Almost silent are the ten Kikuyu warriors striding in slow motion, one clenched fist shooting up in the air every ten paces…
We squat in the sun, in black dirt abraded from the mountain. You prick my arm with a thorn. “Does it hurt?” It does hurt. We’re playing nurse and mother getting her abortion. You draw out all my blood, then with invisible gauze from your imaginary white enamel tray bandage my sore arm. In her…
No coat, bad shoes, caught sudden In a spring downpour, a girl scrambles Into a small market on her way Home from school. The old man is alone, Picking bruised apples from a bin, tossing them Softly, one at a time into a slop can. Usually, he chases kids out, having caught them lifting Chocolate…
Catherina Schrader, midwife, nearly an apparition in mists rising from the Wadden Zee, follows a stranger to his boggy farm. The man is afraid of his wife, her cries, her twisted face. Who knows what may enter a woman and flourish there? There have been stories—monsters with fingers and toes grown together like pigs’ feet…
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