January 1, 2002
The Zebra Longwing
Forty years I've waited, uncomprehending, for these winter nights when the butterfliesfold themselves like paper cranes to sleep in the dangling roots of the orchids boxed and hung from the […]
January 1, 2002
Before Morning
A name in the dark a tissue of echoes a breath repeated on the arch of my foot the mute messenger last one to have heard the music I remember […]
January 1, 2002
The Diviners
A paranoid reading … Around here water is wealth. It’s a dry place, on the cusp of the Great Southern, where crops are barely sustainable and the scant rains re […]
January 1, 2002
Who Wants It or Not
The mind of Eurydice in the head of Orpheus, as the head turns toward me. Slash, a head is cut off. Lap, lap, lap of the water sucking itself back […]
January 1, 2002
Surviving Love
I work hard at managing, grateful and spare. I try to forgive all trespasses. I give thanks for the desert. I rejoice to be alive here in the simple world. […]
January 1, 2002
The Well
It was late in the day and we sat there, on the crumbling edge, dropping small stones into the deepening blackness. Do you find wells sexual? she asked. A pair […]
January 1, 2002
Body Games
Shelley Jackson is a gifted writer, illustrator, performer, and electronic artist who, very playfully, very disturbingly, takes the body apart and puts it back together again, always in startlingly imaginative […]
January 1, 2002
Under the Day
To come back like autumn to the moss on the stones after many seasons to recur as a face backlit on the surface of a dark pool one day after […]
January 1, 2002
Walking on Tiptoe
Long ago we quit lifting our heels like the other—horse, dog, and tiger— though we thrill to their speed as they flee. Even the mouse bearing the great weight of […]
January 1, 2002
Praying Hands
There is at least one pair in every thrift shop in America, molded in plastic or plaster of paris and glued to a plaque, or printed in church-pamphlet colors and […]
January 1, 2002
Sixty-First Birthday
By the toe of my boot, a pebble of quartz, one drop of the earth's milk, dirty and cold. I held it to the light and could almost see through […]
January 1, 2002
A New Song
In my daughter's room upstairs we are sometimes stopped by a wasp or two, or more, crawling across the warmed glass of her sunny window— sluggish things come from their […]