1. He looked at the seed for a long time. His mind did not comprehend. It did not flower anymore. The seed was just a seed. She had said it was begonia. He tried to imagine what begonias looked like. Purple blossoms, rich yellow, supple orange, blue petals? The mind that made the seed…
If Earth is one of seven ancient wandering stars, where is that girl who, every afternoon, runs water into a basin of hollow scales? Surely not in the vertical crowds, among colonizers and women passing in shallow hats. Nor riding with the plutonium makers, without hair or explanations, whose buckles glow in…
It’s not a fancy restaurant, nor is it a dump and it’s packed this Saturday night when suddenly a man leaps onto his tabletop, whips out his prick and begins sawing at it with a butter knife. I can’t stand it anymore! he shouts. The waiters grab him before he draws blood and hustle him…
She reclines, more or less. Try that posture, it’s hardly languor. Her right arm sharp angles. With her left she conceals her ambush. Shoes but not stockings, how sinister. The flower behind her ear is naturally not real, of a piece with the sofa’s drapery. The windows (if any) are shut. This is indoor sin….
The dreadlocks had all fallen off from chemotherapy, and so when Marley died in Switzerland they flew the body in the hold to Kingston, where he would lie in state, or in the anti-state he’d written all those hymns for, his face ironed into repose and sweet, or bland if sweet couldn’t be done. “Baldheads”…
Everything is so dark under the baby, the table floats legless, a rectangle of light. Around it the angels are bending their doctoral faces, the baby unswaddled, undisturbed. But can you see them? See the kleigs bearing down on the infant, throwing up a stark light on the angels’ faces,…
Tamales plain-steamed then whitened like a wedding dress with cream and queso. A beautiful simple food. And not enough. We want more. We are cravers of storms and choques on the highway. We never mind waiting in the long stopped lines if at the end there can be some blood. Forget our lovers. We want…
Pomp churned through midtown like a combine, razing a path to the Waldorf-Astoria. At 34th and 10th a black man drizzled a wan froth of soap and dirt on my windshield and paused for me to pay to get it squeegeed off. He just wanted, he said, to make an honest living. I gave a…
You know how tiny kids walk up to you, raise their arms and expect to be picked up—I used to do that; that was me. Me, with my diaper full and my nose half-crusty. I remember being eye to eye with the little doors underneath the kitchen sink—I was a child seriously. I used to…
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