1. CHLORIS HAS HER SAY “If it’s true, Chloris, that you love me,and I’ve heard you do love me well—”was a fresh way for you to begin.After that you lost the thread a bit,scorning ambrosia and the prospectof trading places with kings if my lovewere sure. (No kings were offering.)—from “Anti-Pastorals,” Volume . . .
Read More
Before we brush our teeth and get dressed, beforeI take two kinds of blood pressure pills and threefiber gummies, put coffee in one kind of go-cup,kale smoothie in another, get into the car, I say I wantto have one more cup of coffee in bed and read youthis Ellen Bass poem, but it’s . . .
Read More
At dawn, when I have to pee and there is that dread of standing, and afterI pee and drink a small jam jar of water, you’re the first thing I put in my hand, Pill. In my palm you’re so perfect and white and round, and then I addanother one of you, . . .
Read More
We knew what we would lose before we had it, but I know why I stayed.When I close my eyes, I can still seeour kitchen skin and half a lemon left there,turning in on itself like the fistsour mothers made in every cardinal direction,and how late it was in the afternoon.You were rinsing . . .
Read More
In another life, I join the hierophantsof New Jersey, drink petrochemical windsswirling across Route One, a new Delphi,speak their ethylene mysteries. Called back by my inexorable childhood, it becomesimpossible to ignore my sons’ own strangegifts: smokestacks stop smoking, chimneyfires burn green as pine trees, then flare out.—from “In Another Life,” Volume 65, . . .
Read More
Seyyed Gholam Hossein Shabdari Kermani was blessed with a clitoris on his right nipple, or at least that was his pickup line. This is a story about him. At the raw age of five, he discovered pleasure while playing with a pink screwdriver in an empty garage, where his balding father and seven potbellied uncles played . . .
Read More
I think you’re still here sometimescalling to me like the thrush at duskinside the woods where I lose my way.I search for you like a ghost myselfin all the usual places, stand on the shorethis side of you and speak to the riverthat flows and stays, stays and flows.—from “This Side of . . .
Read More
Years after it was over and he was gone, I would think of the unfortunate womanhe was living with now and engaged to marry. Poor woman with the face so pale and flat like a slide down a mountain rock. Poor plus-fifty bride-to-be with the voice . . .
Read More
I would have liked to see myself going into the little room at the Café Boscán enraged and pistol in hand looking for his face facing some other face among the tables. He spoke wet, moldy words. I’d have stuck the barrel of the pistol to his forehead and, sublime as he . . .
Read More
OPENING: A pair of sheer white curtains undulate as a breeze blows. They are suspended in air, floating on their own. Behind them, pitch black. NARRATORWe are here, at a criss-cross of story and memory, place and time.We are here to witness and listen, to embrace and mend the fractures.Why are you here? . . .
Read More