The road flares burning where the truck swerved off Just before midnight show the streaks in gravelAnd banged-up tailgate slanted in its trough. Those passing—weary, wondering—slow their travelOn sight of massed police and long enough . . . . Continue Reading »
Most evenings I’d meet Daniel right in frontOf City Hall, to walk home for our mealOn Rue Domat, just westward of Rue Dante.We’d stroll across the bridges, always steal A glance at militaires patrolling thereIn threes (in Charlie Hebdo days), while highAbove the gardens and above the . . . . Continue Reading »
In the obits, ballplayers still finish first,their August exploits no one quite remembersrestored to life: the diving stop unrehearsedamid the routine plays of life’s surrender. But beneath our unnamed pastoral hero,I’ll find her, too, Ms. Forbes-Under-Thirtywho built a company up from zero,ran . . . . Continue Reading »
So-and-so slept here, a date, a listof battles fought—whatever they’re about,he reads them all, not just to get the gistbut top to bottom, loudly, calling outexcitedly, listen to this, you guys,to share with them this knowledge on display,this one cool fact. The kids all roll their . . . . Continue Reading »
Is it a violence to take the knife to the loaf? This redemptionhas a split crust and is covered in seeds. There is bloodfrom where I dropped the Pyrex bowl and the chippedglass lodged itself between my fingers as I tried to erase the mistake. Between the kneading and the risingI wait for the . . . . Continue Reading »
I am blind and burnt.An old man taught me home’s forgetting, murderous seducer left me lost,took the last path I knew drained past parents piety.I watched him mix them with hemlock saying follow me as his legs went cold.Some strange immortality closed his eyes as he gave my hopes to Hades.More . . . . Continue Reading »
Phariseus et publicanus. Luc xviii. 14–19 En duo templum adeunt, diversis mentibus ambo. Ille procul trepido lumnie signat humum.It gravis hic, et in alta ferox petetralia tendit. Plus habet . . . . Continue Reading »
Who says we give away the pearls we own?Think make-believe: think souvenir or prizefor weathering a storm, reaching a stoneledge. Think yielding. It never happens. Eyes that see beyond the sill will recognizedarkness cast by leaves, the loss of Sunday. What do you mean? Old habits: our bodyseeks the . . . . Continue Reading »
I could have listened to her read a phone book,numbers and letters formed in her mouthas if a hibiscus could trumpet each namelike they were enumerated perfectlybetween summer incantations. She was welcoming in that way givingnotes to nomenclature, scores to monotony.Senile alligators gathered . . . . Continue Reading »
In the summer of 1970, Elizabeth Hardwick may have been the best nonfiction prose writer in America, just as Jim Hines was the fastest man alive and Joe Frazier was the heavyweight champion of the world. She was the queen mother of the New York Review of Books, one of its four cofounders and . . . . Continue Reading »
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