a checkerboard design of wheat and cornno larger than the foldout sectionof my neighbor’s travel magazine.At this stage of the journeyI would estimate the distancebetween myself and my own feelingsis roughly the same as the mileagefrom Seattle to New York,so I can lean back into the upholstered intervalbetween Muzak and lunch,a little bored, a little…
had hurtled out of Canadaand crashed into a million trees,flaming the leaves, setting the woods on fire.The sky is a thick, cold gauze –but there’s a soup special at the Waffle House downtown,and the Jack Parsons show is up at the museum,full of luminous red barns.– Or maybe I’ll visit beautiful Donna,the kickboxing queen from…
Don’t take it personal, they said;but I did, I took it all quite personal—the breeze and the river and the color of the fields;the price of grapefruit and stamps,the wet hair of women in the rain—And I cursed what hurt meand I praised what gave me joy,the most simple-minded of possible responses.The government reminded me…
walking through the underground garage;jets were roaring overhead, and if I had been wiseI would have looked up at those heavy-bellied cylindersand seen the wheelchairs and the frightened dogs inside;the kidneys bedded in dry ice and Styrofoam containers.I would have known that in synagogues and churches all over towncouples were gathering like flocks of geesegetting…
and in the parking lot, the new car models were on parade.Sometimes I think that nothing really changes—The young girls show the latest crop of tummies,and the new president proves that he’s a dummy.But remember the tennis match we watched that year?Right before our eyessome tough little European blondepitted against that big black girl from…
still dazed from their great outpouring,pushing their strollers along the public river walk.And the day is also beautiful—the replica 19th-century paddle-wheelerperpetually moored at the city wharfwith its glassed-in bar and grillfor the lunch-and-cocktail-seekerswho come for the Mark Twain Happy Hourwhich lasts as long as the Mississippi.This is the kind of town where the rush hour…
Now his nose is less like a hatchetAnd more like a snuffler.Flames don’t erupt from his mouth anymoreAnd life doesn’t crack his thermometer.Instead of overthrowing the governmentHe reads fly-fishing cataloguesAnd takes photographs of water.An aphorist would sayThe horns of the steer have grown straighter.He has an older heartthat beats younger.His Attila the Hun imitationIs not…
with the boys, getting louder and louderas the empty cans drop out of our pawslike booster rockets falling back to Earthand we soar up into the summer stars.Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,bearing asteroids and mist, blind fishand old space suits with skeletons inside.On Earth, men celebrate their hairiness,and it is good, a way…
one of them singing news about a far-off war,one comparing the breast size of an actress from Hollywoodto the breast size of an actress from Bollywood.And here is my niece Lucinda,who is nine and a true daughter of Texas,who has developed the flounce of a pedigreed blondeand declares that her favorite sport is shopping.Today is…
that man and that woman setting off in different directions,like pilgrims in a proverb—him to buy his very own toaster oven,her seeking a prescription for sleeping pills.Let us keep in mind the hidden forceswhich had struggled underground for yearsto push their way to the surface—and that finally did,cracking the crust, moving the plates of earth…
