For my grandmother The cars flashed like scales as the hearse-headed snake Crawled down the dusty lane to the funeral tent Flapping dove-gray wings in the wind-stropped heat. I saw you snug in the hearse's air-conditioned gut And imagined your eyes opening, staring Through the cloud of velvet lining the brass lid, Your thunder-gray pupils…
A solitary apartment house, the last one before the boulevard ends and a bricked road winds its slow way out of town. On the third floor through the dusty windows Karen beholds the elegant couples walking arm in arm in the public park. It is Saturday afternoon, and she is waiting for a particular young…
The yarn pulled diagonally over neighboring threads in time might equal the sheen on a bird's feather, a flower petal's tip, or some corner of sky. As far back as I remember, she was never without some neutral canvas, rectangle, circle, square, her hands having chosen the continental, basket-weave, or half-stitch. I watched to see…
Before I could tell time, I'd sit and wait For the cuckoo in my mother's wooden clock To open his red door, and sing “cuckoo.” I never knew how many times he'd sing, But the song was regular, and a long trill Gave me a chance to look inside his house Where it was dark…
Low tide along this oceanfront there are the usual chipped conchs, angel wings, atlantic augers spiraling to pintips, and occasionally, beyond the sea wrack or tangled in it, a perfect starfish. Rainbowed donax burrow at the water's edge, moving beneath the surface like slippers. Some escape the sandpipers which scatter when we head south toward…
I was dressed to be a man With saggy hose and doublet, A sword belt, a sword, And a cap with a ragged feather Over my pinned-up hair. I had no lines to speak. We lords and gentlemen Standing around in silence, Cued to swell a progress, Were played by tall girls. The short girls…
Our guide has built our hopes up. He claims Recife is the Venice of Brazil. Nothing so far in the state of Pernambuco equals the Grand Canal or the Doge's Palace. Where are the gondolas and glassblowers? Our guide insists. He drives us over “Venetian-like” bridges, and each bridge leads to a Moorish church on…
Talk floats. Rain covers the windows. We're driving north to show Mount Vernon To my mother-in-law and her niece, Mary. In the back seat Minnie and Mary sigh As both of them recall Miss Ambrose Who died at ninety-five last summer. Mary is sixty, short and diabetic. Minnie is seventy-four, her memory sharp. Miss Ambrose…
I almost died last night eating shrimp. That's how they diagnosed it at Mount Auburn Emergency after they'd shot me full of adrenalin. My heart fluttered, I couldn't keep my hands still, and I laughed and cried like a crazy person, my face swollen with hives, my throat closing. “I don't look like this,” I…
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