Some of the sounds here are familiar: Vivaldi plays the same in this language, keys rattle in locks, the engines of buses sigh as they turn street corners. But something is different, an odd solitude. It digs itself under my watch into the small bones of my wrist. Here in . . . . Continue Reading »
She turned to me one night as if to say: “I know.” And though I waited for her words as we Walked along the outside path of cobblestones And grass, her eyes instead made effort to Explain her inner thoughts and fears. Pain, I knew she’d meant to share aloud. Had . . . . Continue Reading »
It drew people to it like a fire,The needle floating up and down its dial,Fishing for the news. It was a horror house,A band-stand, Europe in flames,A dummy and his master. AmongThe cloudy mirrors and calendars,The radio knobs are toys now,The beasts have been dragged out;No tankers hug the coast at . . . . Continue Reading »
I will become dust and you will become dust and ashes our tongues and ashes our eyes but, ever beloved and empassioned dust, our embers will last as long as the skies. —Anthony . . . . Continue Reading »
The rules of chaos are simple: A mountain is never a perfect cone. A lake is never really a circle. A drop of dew is not a microcosm. No. Flowers wither. Dust collects. There is the relentless return of what we do not want. Everything inclines to disorder. But then how . . . . Continue Reading »
That the world should end in an orgy of pain was inconceivable at my conception in the Panama Canal Zone where the hydraulic locks were emblems of the unity of oceans. But the hydraulic harmony was striated with tropical diseases and now cancer where was torrid procreation; day . . . . Continue Reading »
Q. Who made you? A. (Melissa Murphy, Age 10): Who makes me you should say! I co-creates me ev’ry day. My tender psyche I unlocks & with my mental pencil box I brightly crayons, without fault, My very very own gestalt & so I comes to be alert To all my pain & all my hurt & then when . . . . Continue Reading »
It’s been three days now. We continue to find splinters of rice clinging to our scalps; piercing no skin but adamant, predatory at the root. They will not be removed. Thinking back to the Mass we recall the smallest things—yellow neckties splashed with ciliated . . . . Continue Reading »
1. I start to dream I am waking and wake with a start from the dream. Shadows gather in the attic, in the hallways, bedrooms, walls: their smell, like gas, is everywhere. I start to dream I am waking . . . 2. Night falls, then falls again as if drunk, as if slipping on ice . . . . Continue Reading »
On card after card he sees it. Along with a harsh identity photograph And his preposterous signature, A black line struggling into a name. The face is Irish, and his name. And even some of the wallet cards, The printer prayer to St. John Neumann, Bohemian bishop in . . . . Continue Reading »
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