In Xanadu
Insane, adieu. It's summer; there are letters every week. Soft petitions, loud refusals, the usual prayers and prophecies, weather reports, prose in several styles.
View ArticleDeleted Scene from a Lasting Relationship
Runner-up in the 2nd Annual Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest.
View ArticleZamboni Driver’s Lament
i know hate, its line-mates. believe me. you kids have, i’m sure, wasted—all early morning anxious and weak-ankled—their first impatient shuffle-kicks and curses on me.
View ArticleThe Idea of Forever
After last call at three a.m. the sun on the horizon like a giant lodestar would guide us over uneven boardwalks and dirt roads toward the George Black Ferry, across the mud-fed Yukon River to where...
View Article“Come Play on my Island”
I can’t blame youfor claiming this place as your ownpersonal theme park. For you,there is only summer when every curvein the road brings a new photograph—red cliffs climbing out of the sea, field upon...
View ArticleInspection
In the line (three abreast) that stretchedfrom the dock into the Baggage Roomup the steep flight of stairsto the hall of the Registry Room
View ArticleThe Poem as Yard Sale
You’re certainly not doing it for the money: that becomes clear when you imagine the weight of two quarters in your palm
View ArticleOld People and Snow
My beautiful old ones are disappearing slowly. They simply leave, without rules, without a farewell.
View ArticleDown East
My old pal Chuck asked me and my sister Stella to drive down east with him. We weren’t doing anything else at the time and so we jumped at the chance.
View ArticleLost Diary
At first the sound was like a raw stropping of steel on steel although we had little such heavy stuff along...
View ArticlePoem For the Barn
Here is your rickety wooden poem. Here is your red, peeling paint poem, your weather-beaten and abused poem. Here is your hands-full-of-slivers poem, knuckle-broken and arthritic.
View ArticleCountry Music Love
You are clearly preoccupied with love. See the way you siftthrough the lint from your purse, searching for the backing ofan earring. See the runway of broken leaves and bread crumbscollecting under the...
View ArticleBad Men Who Love Jesus
It isn’t what you think. I’m not just another American gringo,chasing old lady luck South.Staring wide-eyed at their beautiful skin,at the bones of the burros,the dogs and the rats. It’s not why I’ve...
View ArticleTripwire
They felt comfortable in their resemblances, too comfortable to note that the resemblances contained differences like tripwires cunningly laid and hidden.
View ArticleNight Kitchen
The phone rings at 11:30 at night and as soon as you hear your father’s voice you know something bad has happened.
View ArticleSwitchbacks
I saw my mother under sedation in the Psych Ward, after she collapsed at the funeral. She foresaw the bridge disaster, but no one believed her, not even father. Her “visions” made him uneasy.
View ArticleKid Stuff
Moth fought his last fight in the basement of a church forty miles out of town. The crowd was polite and applauded after every round, but made hardly a sound while the punches were being thrown. None...
View ArticleUn Patient est Trouvé Mort: Haikus from the French
1. a quitté l’urgence de l’hopital vers six heures hier matin : Yesterday morning I was not thinking about You, only, faltered
View ArticleDirector, Saviour, Surgeon
In his hotel room the director took a mouthful of Scotch, swallowed a Viagra and then headed off to the gala.
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