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Costa Maya

Catherine Savage Brosman

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

Catherine Savage Brosman

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

Catherine Savage Brosman

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

Catherine Savage Brosman

—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

Catherine Savage Brosman

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

Catherine Savage Brosman

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

Catherine Savage Brosman

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

Catherine Savage Brosman

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

Catherine Savage Brosman

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

Catherine Savage Brosman

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

Catherine Savage Brosman

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

Catherine Savage Brosman

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

Catherine Savage Brosman

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

Catherine Savage Brosman

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

Catherine Savage Brosman

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...