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Drouth

From the June/July 1993 Print Edition

I invoke the air in rage, am like a cancer in a cage—only myself to burn, to burn; mere glass and sun on an empty stage. Pick and spade, curse and yearn—agatefulls are struck and turned, one by one and year by year, until the hollow has been earned. Now the reckoning . . . . Continue Reading »

Simple Anna

From the June/July 1993 Print Edition

Simple Anna liked the words although she didn’t understand what many of them meant. Her man sometimes could make them into worlds where forests shaded green young girls. The girls were always what she was when what she was was what she dreamed. By herself she never dreamed, not any . . . . Continue Reading »

Man in a Glacier

From the May 1993 Print Edition

The mountainside failed. But when  we saw that deep spot the dead sun  came back heavy as an engine  and my pick rattled like a gun. The ice unravelled; we peeled it from  his toothy face, glittering brown,  a woody rubber round his mind,  the Bronze Age still stuck to . . . . Continue Reading »

Aceldama

From the May 1993 Print Edition

Eternity is uncorrupted light;the world proceeds by interrupting sight,exchanging day and night.Half the acts of earth avoid the sun;much that's donemay be begun by day but end at night:aborted, buried lightis customary here; it shocks no morethan does a warsuch as the one we wage against the . . . . Continue Reading »