July 1, 2002
Deadpan Huck, Or, What’s Funny about Interpretation
“I am never serious [said K.], and therefore I have to make jokes do duty for both jest and earnest. But I was arrested in earnest.” —Franz Kafka deleted […]
July 1, 2002
Country Boy
From the Burmese. The boy had never slept under anything but thatch, and he was startled by the drumming of rain on the corrugated iron roof. At this point, just […]
July 1, 2002
Spring at Black River
The dog is punctilious racing after the ball. It pains him to bring it back. Though we pride ourselves on our power to love, how to be loved is a […]
July 1, 2002
The Doctor
From the French. In the circular courtyard, trees Turn yellow, a madwoman in restraints Watches them; all at once she starts to speak As if nothing were out of the […]
July 1, 2002
Late Summer Dew
Some measure whose meaning we defer something passing between sky and grass like a hand pressing lightly on a head of hair some love or liking daily growing more definite […]
July 1, 2002
Infidelity
The sun hovering a mile above the edge of the Pacific, the wind rifling through the sea grass … Early evening of the longest day of your life. Vast is […]
July 1, 2002
Across the River
a bull moose waits (for something) to cross the river. Finally it crosses. You want to link the moose to the pain in your chest but to compare a moose's […]
July 1, 2002
As Far as I Could Tell
After they pulled my wisdom tooth both eyeballs ached into their moorings. Something with spurs had lodged behind my eardrum. Dawn came, vague with codeine and the sound of rain, […]
July 1, 2002
Morning on Despina
Lioness morning falls on Despina. The island shrinks in the heat. Warmed, the caterpillars in green heaps uncurl, disengage, take up their threads and file back to their round. And […]
July 1, 2002
The Splinter Groups of Breakfast
1. Not even nothing existed yet. Emptiness, even, didn't exist. And He-who-by-definition-precedeth-nothing said—well, you know what He said, in that grandiloquent King James way of speaking. And there was light. […]
July 1, 2002
Hagar to Sarai
Don't give me nothing in exchange for a beating in my belly, sore nipples way after the sucking is gone. Don't thank me for my body, a fine drinking skin […]
July 1, 2002
Otto Bar
You must understand. The drink tasted of blood because of the cap's mineral tang, because of the salt of the hand that served, because the singer in your band had […]