At last he lays his head flat upon the ground, close to my foot, and sets my other foot upon his head, as he had done before; and after this made all the signs to me of subjection, servitude, and submission imaginable, to let me know how he would serve me so long as […]

So I had this winter job at a junkyard where I stood around a fire in a barrel and warmed my hands until the boss cussed me out. This was the signal to use my fiber blade saw and trim copper pipe from the ends of scrap car radiators. Two or three of us doing […]

I told myself clouds, but stars confronted me, my cosmic ignorance: speed of light, gravity, the workings of clocks, cell division, fossilization, my skin’s elasticity, and some nights the lunar phase that leaves no moon to find. I carried you in circles, eyes angling for crescent, quarter, halo. You pursed your lips, waited for my […]

I. It is the opposite of winter,     this place, except for the long shadows. I was under one –     under the windmills at Guantanamo, the day Ted Kennedy died. Looking down     on the lowered U.S. flag at the top of John Paul Jones Hill tall and still above the cactus bushes     Castro left behind as […]

On Learning, Late in Life, that Your Mother Was a Jew                           Methuselah something.  Somethingsomething Ezekiel.                                                                                                 —Albert Goldbarth So that explains it, you say to yourself. And for one split second, you confront the mirror like a Gestapo operative— narrow-eyed, looking for the telltale hint, the giveaway (jawline, profile, eyebrow)— something visible […]

THE BUS STOP PARK Of all the crazy things I’ve seen along the path that hacks the corner off the bus stop park, a plot of die-hard ivy beneath a gingko tree where bits of colored glass shimmer like jewels the forty thieves have dropped, this one takes the cake. Trust me; I’ve seen some […]

I. Charles Keys: At the Wheelwright’s Shop My job was one of arcs and angles, anxious folks preparing for a journey (theirs or someone else’s).                                 Wagon wheels demand precision, while the dead absolve a coffin’s hasty corner. Hacksaw, rasp, and […]