Poetry

A Great Sensibility

     You live among the remnants of an ancient civilization that has left behind it an intricate system of canals and waterways. No one understands the books and rituals your ancestors handed down to you, but somehow everybody assumes that it must be necessary to maintain the waterways to irrigate the rice crop.      Only at the…

Brododaktylos

     You’re over seven feet tall and weigh close to three hundred pounds, but you’re so well proportioned that nobody ever realizes just how big you are until he sees you standing next to another human being. Your manner with other people is gentle and considerate.      One afternoon while you’re sitting in a bar with friends,…

The Megalopolitans

It wasn’t my grandfather’s. He lectured at Tremont Hall On a snowy night. As a starter—just to break the ice—he cracked: “I’m glad the both of you could come.” There wasn’t even scattered laughter In the half empty house. After his peroration And after he had swept off back stage His Prince Albert skirts Breezing…

Abusing the Confidence of a Child

     Several miles in the distance clouds of dust rose hundreds of feet in the air, marking the passage of the more than two hundred thousand pilgrims who were making their way deep into the phosphate-rich Spanish Sahara.      Frankie pulled her white illustrated T-shirt over her head and bared her firm young breasts to the onslaught…

Who’s on First?

“You can be so inconsiderate.”                        ”You are too sensitive.” “Then why don’t you take my feelings into consideration?”                              ”If you weren’t so sensitive it wouldn’t matter.” *     *      * “You seem to really care about me only when you want me to do something for you.”            ”You do…

Feebleness of Hands

     The past has left its mark on you.      One Saturday afternoon you and a number of other people went for a ride on Lake Erie in a friend’s new boat. It was cold and overcast and the boat began to fall to pieces several miles from shore. The builder had obviously not put it together…

Letting Up

The meander of my walking, and through it A sun that swings to go with me at each turn, And sweet fatigue that remains childlike because      It works at nothing. Push aggressively enough at the stout weave Of what is, appearances we must take as Being what they seem, and you start to tear through,…