In memoriam: Clementa Pinckney and eight others murdered at Mother Emanuel It’s only here where I’ve seen the surf crimping into ruffled-up petticoats, the edges of olive and indigo skirts of wave, of glance, of flirt, of buff— Rococo cream frame for the rough tide,...
We pull them on daily weighted with sentiment, one at a time; first over the toes, sliding past the arches, and finally tugging up and over the heel. We tightly knot the laces, tucking in the excess strings, fasten buckles, shine the scuffs off the toe cap, secure the...
for Joan Sit under the tree long enough And you will be covered in blossoms We will all bury our loves In the cold earth of springtime Even if no one is there to watchOr bear witness or testament Even a hero’s song will end in oxygen machinesCount the...
“ . . . there is nothing so coherent as a paranoid’s delusion or a swindler’s story.”—Clifford Geertz, in his study of Balinese cockfighting We’ve left the frontier with the blue helmets. There is always Schubert playing somewhere in a war zone.The commander puts...
For my grandfather, Lewis Parke Chamberlayne “ . . . so-called periods of transition (if all periods are not so) –those centuries when a new religious or political systemis growing up amidst the decay of the old one . . . ” —L.P.C. Since the contagion isn’t...
In the attic of this hundred year-old housethe gable window stares dry-eyed into the sun. Years ago, careless and in a hurry to finish at the topof a tall ladder, I painted it shut from the outside. Now it won’t budge. With the heels of both handsI press against the...
Iraq war protestors. Feb. 15, 2003 JFK Federal Building, Boston, March 2003 After days of drums, chanting, and frightened planningwe sit, quiet, on a scab of concrete,blocking the spinning doors of war.My animal eyes fix on the officer’s belt,quick breath awaiting his...
Friend! This year the olives will be late, it has been cool. Cool? I’ve never sweltered like this. No. This is what cool means. We pick by hand, putting in ventilated boxes in the shade to press that very day. We know what Abbas Ibn Fadhl thought he knew...
I wake to dark sky and heavy rain equal in an hour to 30 inches of snow. The emergency signal blares on the radio.Flash floods.People strandedon roofs of cars.Stay off the roads! House-bound, I pick upwhere I left offin Remarque, his bookabout the...
KIA near Tchepone, Laos 1971 February’s tired handcloses around the lilies.The night air like silk,streams of still waterhold the rotation of starsin your eyes. You arefeather, black wingabove the wounds,above the stripped brownmountains and treesthat wave their...
