The shoal we saw from the boat was fish; it parted as I dove through, and formed again overhead, each fish like a dancing molecule in a rock
On the flight to Merida we came down through clouds that looked like brains or scrambled eggs, but th...
The ones his age who shook my hand on their way out sent fear along my arm like heroin
These weren’t men mute about their feelings, or what’s a body language for
And I, the glib one, who’d stood with my back to my father’s body and prais...
for Paul Levitt Be perpendicular to the basket, toes avid for the line
Already this description is perilously abstract: the ball and basket are round, the nailhead centered in the centerplank of the foul-circle is round, and though the rumple...
Most of the time he worked, a sort of sleepwith a purpose, so far as I could tell
How he got from the dark of sleepto the dark of waking up I'll never know;the lax sprawl sleep allowed himbegan to set from the edges in,like a custard, and the...
I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeenand so I swung into action and wrote a poemand it was miserable, for that was how I thoughtpoetry worked: you digested experience shatliterature
It was 1960 at The Showplace, long sincedefunct, o...
the only parts of the body the same size at birth as they'll always be
"That's why all babies are beautiful," Thurber used to say as he grew blind -- not dark, he'd go on to explain, but floating in a pale light always, a kind of ca...
Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife He would have written sonnets all his life
ON
AN,
II, 63-4"Where do you see yourself five years from now
"First, do no harm," the
Oath begins, but before she might enjoysuch balm, the docs had to harm her tumor
It was large, rare, and so anomalousin its behavior that at first they mis-diagnosed it
"Your wife will die of ...
1
Montego Bay, 10:00 P
M
A chandelier, a tiara, a hive of lights
Here we picked wild strawberries, though in my memory we're neither here nor missing
Or I'd scuff out by myself at dusk, proud to be lonely
Now everything's in bloom along the road at once: tansy mustard, sow thistle, fescue, burdock, so...
Baudelaire: "The dead, the poor dead, have their bad hours
"But the dead have no watches, no grief and no hours
At first not smoking took all my time:
I did ita little by little and hour by hour
A few rats are gnawing along the floor of the silo, but what are a few rats against this tower of food
It takes 75,000 crocus blossoms to make a pound of saffron
And after today out there in the heat, nobody dreams of food
In our dr...