A man who works in our bank tells me, because I have a Dutch name, that in the war his battalion liberated Maastricht. “We all went back years later, and the people gave us a real celebration. . .” A weekend in Maastricht! Pastry shops in ancient grey buildings. Our host, whose arm was paralyzed…
I. Insomnia The bulb at the front door burns and burns. If it were a white rose it would tire of blooming through another endless night. The moon knows the routine; it beats the bushes from east to west and sets empty-handed. Again the one she is waiting for has outrun the moon. II. Old…
He pushed across the street to where she waited. If this was love, it was the other kind, not any different from what he’d known. For her part, she never thought of it as love, just one person helping another move some household things from one room to another cold room in bad weather. She…
(for Kate) It’s the one thing you’ve asked for — your medicine now, not hours from now, on the way home, after this new rigmarole of your x-rays, tests, upstairs, downstairs — but I simply can’t find a drugstore. Back at the clinic, I can’t even find you again — I’m shown to still another…
The moon clouds over and is done. The Polish crones roam Mutual Tower spitting, polishing, sifting the trash for small gifts their grandchildren will turn into trash. Deep in the folds of the dark, some poor infant cries and cries for comfort and will not be calmed. Under the police siren’s wail it continues, clearing…
1 Hey, Joe When my sister was in college whenever she wrote a paper she’d sit there picturing her teacher reading it collapsing with derision rushing to phone a friend — “Hey, Joe — ya gotta hear this one!” She’d go on about this fantasy to a friend of ours, who, around this time, got…
For you it was not much of a time, and you sat calmly waiting for it to end and dissolve you on into the walk through wind back to the office building; waiting for it to be past and just a dim memory of a long table of vaguely chuckling faces; waiting for this one…
Sap withdraws from the upper reaches of maples; the squirrel digs deeper and deeper in the moss to bury the acorns that fall all around, distracting him. I’m out here in the dusk, tired from teaching and a little drunk, where the wild asters, last blossoms of the season, straggle uphill. Frost flowers, I’ve heard…
for E.B., 1911-1979 We had to hurry to catch the open silver train that jingled the rim of the park. It was early, Sunday, summer-hazy, and we imagined we were the only ones around: only also the quick Catalonian boys — jumped from the red hibiscus hedge, and ran along the rail, and grabbed expertly…
No products in the cart.