Archive

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...

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...

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...

—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...

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,...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...