The power was off. We cleared dishes from the table. Shutters crashed against the windows. Below us, in the lake, the minnows were in a frenzy. Limbs cracked like knuckles—one great trunk smashed to the ground. Leaves flew past, pasted themselves to the panes. Somewhere, my father was on a train. The blue walls quaked,…
for Louis, my father As God knows, the child sees, in middle age The strewn windfall of the befallen. Today I am reading the poems written when I was a child (the cobalt tower text Of Hart Crane; spinster Stevens’ intricate Book of needles; oracular Yeats, Unkind). And I am writing a…
The absurd has its reasons which the reason absorbs: now the outlines throb when you draw, and the decade of sight left you will leave you diligently vulnerable to the long littleness of life, who revealed so little else— for you humanity was definable broadly by its weaknesses or narrowly as your crayon could encroach…
Did your mother ever wear a hat with a whole bird’s nest growing on it, or a dress patterned with naked bodies? Remember how long the street seemed then, how you stepped behind her to investigate a fence post, shop window, blade of grass, anything to let you fall behind? Perhaps she was an immigrant,…
One night there was no moon, and never had been. In the space where the moon was the weather Stopped, everything happened for The first time. I cannot imagine space As it then was, the cradle unrocking In the tideless air. The man stopped, the shadow vanished, There was nothing to read. In their…
A dusky cloud, a tree, a giant (caught on the line of magnification) deeply whorled hand from the group at the center. A picturesque little house with watersteps and a boat, momentarily forsaken. You can see its boatman down by the lagoon with two others, pointing deeper into the painting with a shrewd air of…
In all the cathedrals of Europe I’ve seen only one smiling angel, feathered wings like the others, blasted by war. She’s famous not only because she’s smiling but because of the smile. It might be that the harvest is fine, but I don’t think so: too much reflected mischief in her face. As if a…
Take away death, the last enemy—; and my own flesh shall be my dear friend throughout eternity. —Augustine Watching myself, naked, in the mirror—; My penis thickens, erect. For what? It Is the mind bleeding through the body Into the light. The…
My mother was dying. I didn’t know that, didn’t know why I couldn’t be at home when she had left the hospital to be there. He would take me to Lucile’s and leave me and I’d hate it. I’d worry that I’d have to stay and go on living there like one of hers, like…
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