Divorce proceedings : getting mother on the cross-town bus. Two hours early to make sure—”Don’t rush me, cherubs. They can’t start without the wife.”—bath, hat, shoes, good wool suit, matching calfskin gloves. To the curb to wait. After she left, we changed what we could : we cleaned. After an afternoon’s eternity of lye, bleach […]
Poetry 65
Sean Singer: Loss
There is loss in the world. I don’t feel awful because lost people Took part of me. But because I can no longer give to them. He is in a coffin in a church in Chicago, or she is dating someone new And singing Schumann. Great Tumblers of the Universe have done things: make me […]
Joanna C. Scott: Fire
…Manila, the eighties Here, when the dead come back to ease unruliness of soul, the atmosphere becomes so charged the slightest spark can set off one of those unexplained unexplainable sudden upward rushings, like a surge of anger, like the hotel on the esplanade that burned for two weeks straight before they put it out. […]
Ethan Paquin: Laughter is X, Laughter is Y
I. I had to get there quick to see it: Harry’s pursuit for the perfect umbrella, the graying myriads plying the naiads at Flought Beach for dimes and ice nuggets (which spell the flume of hot dough and frankfurter almost enough to keep the bikiniads pleasant), thongs re-routing the glances of a. Hopper b. Rockwell […]
Kelly Le Fave: Prophecy
That morning, people in the next house all the way to the badlands will grab somebody’s wrist. Momentous instant! Each will scan another’s eyes; at last love will be nothing but concord and proximity, its slope greased on the spot. And you, everybody’s bundle, rose rising in your cheeks at the touch of a stranger. […]
Sandra Kohler: The Pond
Why does a man decide to build a pond on the land of a house he’s planning to sell, a Vermont schoolhouse? Too ashamed of this decision to tell his wife of forty years, he calls the contractor, hires him, commits himself, his shame equaled by his insistent will: this pond must be. He should […]