January 1, 2002
One out of Many
Look at the back of the Ten, unique among paper currencies for the quotidian detail of the pedestrian street scene in front of the treasury, singular, save the endangered Two […]
January 1, 2002
Fat
I’m afraid things have gone to pot around here since you left. Cadbury has buried the remote control and I’ve let myself go. I know you think I should keep […]
January 1, 2002
Silence and Glare
I get out of the car. Stand stilland listen. Look at the abandoned house,but generally. Has the plaster fallen off?If so, how long have the adobe bricksbeen exposed to rain? […]
January 1, 2002
Miss December
First month of winter, Orion's belt at dog call stretched tight on the eastern sky, Tempus viveudi, tempus morendi, Everything laughter, everything dust. Unthinkable dust. Unthinkable. And sun in Scorpio's […]
January 1, 2002
A Sunday Drive
No sense of history in our bones while churches all across the South are torched. An opera critics shun overheard on that gravel road— farm vehicles clogging up the rural […]
January 1, 2002
At Five in the Afternoon
M. is reputed to be the most dangerous town on earth. The weekly average of homicide runs between twenty and thirty. The blast of a car bomb, the rattle of […]
January 1, 2002
Come Sta? Come Va?
On the phone, with the husband, I thought the name was Tuttle. But it turned out he had trouble with his r’s. The wife, when I arrived at their house, […]
January 1, 2002
In Pioneer Park (Later)
On the one swing in Pioneer Park not broken, a boy and girl taking turns pushing each other are trying to reach the sky. He wears her new baseball cap, […]
January 1, 2002
Apple Tree
No choice for the apple tree. And after the surgeon's chainsaw, from one stubbon root two plumes of tree now leaf and even blossom, sky's cool blue between them, whereas […]
January 1, 2002
Broadcasts from the Flood
All day there had been false alarms—Pushpa calling for somebody’s address, Nalini with the news that her aunt from Calcutta had brought down a dozen saris, nothing seen in Bangalore […]
July 1, 2001
Crow
I awoke this morning to the rumbling sound of a crow rolling a bone on the flat-top roof outside my window. From her routine […]
July 1, 2001
What the Sky Delivers
Gloria was practicing her bumps and grinds in the cabin living room. Toby watched from the floor, never taking his eyes off his grandmother. Gloria wasn’t allowed to remove the […]