Lyric Prose |
“Gothic Punctum”
“He was on the point of leaving when the oboist, unwinding her yellow scarf, strode in. A pointed effort to pervert the Rorschach. Children pointing at stars through bare branches.”
Lyric Prose |
“Ars Poetica: Aww”
“You love coming to the dentist, says my dentist with his fingers in my mouth. After I rinse, I smile and say no, I just like you!”
Lyric Prose |
“Lost in a Living Maze,” “Hum of the Season,” “On My Knees: Morning Messengers” & “Endless Other Questions”
“Be present is a predictable instruction. Less often said: how slyly and how fast the present glides out of sight and hides somewhere behind us.”
Lyric Prose |
“Little Bells” & “Land of Joy”
“When I entered the church, there was music playing. / Shoulder to shoulder, silent women, / from nearby Reserves, had roused hope / to fill plastic bags with worn children’s clothing.”
Lyric Prose |
“The Crying”
“The crying began like wind slipping through the cracks of an old window, like the cool pressure of whistling through a missing tooth.”
Lyric Prose |
“Angel of Death” & “Reincarnation”
“When I open my eyes, blurry from sleep and medication, a scrawny old man with a bald pate and scruffy fringe sits in the chair in my hospital room …”
Lyric Prose |
“Spare Change”
“She’s standing by a column. Sole of her right foot on the wall. Blue jeans, black hoodie, café con leche skin. Could have been my younger sister, if I had one. Do you have spare change?”
Lyric Prose |
“Box of Life”
“I slid the spoon in and took my first mouthful — and I froze. I was no longer in our kitchen but standing in the sunny piano room of my mother’s small shingled house on Cape Cod.”
Lyric Prose |
“Where Have You Been, You Ask” & “I was tortured by a hundred ‘Gypsy violinists'”
“I was in a mausoleum. Stole in, brought my chicken sandwich & Orangina, cozied up in an empty crypt & napped. It smelled like roses in there.”
Lyric Prose |
“Forfeit”
“He puts his birthplace down as Brooklyn, of which he knows nothing. When he was a baby he was rescued from Brooklyn. Beside his stats: he hails from.”
Lyric Prose |
“At Café Azure”
“Late teenaged serving assistants who could be first trusted to simulate an uptight mathematical rigor without too much cologne on the lunch shift wore blue Oxford cloth shirts with dark blue armpits on the patio in the bright sun moving under umbrellas whenever they could.”
Lyric Prose |
“Longest Day of the Year” & “Looking Good”
“I was married then and my husband also went to the show and so did my dad who was visiting and was Mickey’s generation, more or less.”
Lyric Prose |
“You & the Dying Languages,” “You in Exile” & “A Girl Like You”
“But when your father, then your mother, died, you imposed sanctions on your own grief and resumed your steady gait to work. Because who is ever really punished by a republic of troubled ghosts?”
Essay |
“The Water Lot”
“Stories were the common currency in lumber camp, kitchen, and barn. Tink, who began logging at 13 years old and weighing 108 pounds, blessed our family with a lot of those tales.”
Lyric Prose |
“Bernini In Love” & “Looking at a Desert Landscape Painting While Isolated with Covid”
“But she eluded him — not just in the statue, which he worked on alone, day after day, but in the tumble of tapestries where she lay naked and laughing on his studio floor.”