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Articles
Costa Maya
At Costa Maya, in the Yucatan,we walked the yellow jetty from the ship,with throngs of other visitors, to seea tacky shoppers’ mecca, with a mall,a plaza, palm trees, piles...
Games of Chance
You’re bound to lose: the house will always win,in time. At first, though, Fortune flatters thosewho yield to her enticements. You beginwith bits of luck, small stakes. If you...
Providence
For pleasure, Fortune, a designer, weaves.We are her stuff—yarn, thread, and loom, ideal.Her tapestry seems flawless; she conceivesit cunningly, attended by her wheel, whose mechanism works, apparently.But might there...
Dust Bowl
—After photographs by Dorothea Lange taken in the Texas Panhandle Alone, a woman stands in black and whitesurveying a discolored sky aboveand nothing on the earth around her, savea...
Dinner at Gautreau’s
I’m seated at Gautreau’s, uptown, with Laine,fine student, now good friend. Obliged to bookan early hour—few choices in this bane,the Covid sequel—we take time to look at wine lists,...
Saint Gertrude
The patroness of those beset by miceand rats, she stands before red tapestry.Blue floor tiles feature her preferred device:crude mousetraps, set to spring. Her sanctity is symbolized in halo,...
Saint Lucy
She is already what she will become.In crimson cape, her neck pierced by a sword,she holds the palm of peace and martyrdom— both suffering and glory, her reward. The...
Saint Vincent of Saragossa
His attributes are few—a book, a rodwith three large hooks. But it cannot conveythe tortures, multiple, endured for God—the rack, a gridiron, burnt flesh wrenched away. Portrayed in deacon’s...
On a Photograph of My Cousin Jean
As lovely as a girl aged twenty-twocan be—intelligent, slim, self-possessed,and beautiful. It’s Florida; it’s newto her, like marriage. Smiling, smartly dressed, she poses, shaded by a palm, besidea terra...
Street Piano
The movers get it out—a Steinway grand,half-rolled, half-carried to the street. A crowd,molecular, implicit, is at handalready. Music hovers meanwhile, proud to weave into the day its ideal strand.A...
An Epitaph for my Parents’ Graves
Their headstones now have sunken into sand,amid tall weeds, some cholla, scattered sage,the writing visible, but not at hand.Their years among the dead compose my age. That which they...
Smoky Sky
The skies are sick, a feverish, jaundiced gray,malodorous with foul effluviadissembling skyline and the light of day—crepuscular, infernal opera. The pines, our lofty but immobile kin,more vincible by axe,...
A Summer Idyll
We’re superannuated now, no doubt. Impossible to overlook the facts: age blotches skin, puts muscle tone to rout, winnows our hair, and gives us cataracts. Pat’s doctors rule. No...
At Sea
We stream on color: blue, aquamarine, dove grey. To look straight down gives vertigo, but farther out the surface seems serene, both concentration and reflective flow. Horizons offer us...
On a Certain Viennese Doctor
Inventing a refined disease afflicting all the human race, he took away ideas of ease, exposed us, left us in disgrace. We’re ego, libido, and id, with sundry drives”a...