Writing

Poetry |

“King Street”

“The noise / from the Greek / restaurant downstairs // subsides, leans / into the shoulder / for the walk home, // a little quiet, / a little drunk …”

Poetry |

“Year of the Snake”

“My long-ago Braille teacher / suspected me of peeking at the little / bumps on the page. I was flattered / And also insulted.”

Poetry |

“Imagine That”

“I learned about Mr. Harrigan, tracked his slaveholding. / We found Mr. Colrain when my wife’s mother sent old papers / no one read at any more. By chance we discovered / their joint tenure in the South Carolina legislature.”

Literature in Translation |

“The First Step,” “Dionysos in Procession,” “The Satrapy,” “Sculptor of Tyana” & “The Displeasure of Selefkides”

“It’s hard on you, born and raised as you were / for the noblest, most magnificent challenges, / that this frustrating destiny of yours / keeps blocking recognition and success. / Trivial things are forever in your way, / pointless small concerns, despondency.”

Poetry |

“The Generations”

“When my father spoke to my aunt from Guaynabo, / I cried when he said to me, his face pale and drawn, / ‘Your cousin tried wading through an undertow.'”

Poetry |

“This Summer the Girls” & “Relics of the Mountain West”

“This summer the girls are all wearing blue / fingernail polish, looking as if they’ve drowned / or suffocated, or been poisoned by carbon / monoxide. As if they’re trying on for size / death …”

Essay |

“On Portraiture”

“Maybe because survivors of the Holocaust, when I was growing up, left much of their interior lives unspoken — to hush up their own memories, to protect their children — I tried to teach myself to read emotions on the human face.”

Poetry |

“A Framed Photograph”

“The day after my father died, / his boss, Charlie, came to our house / carrying a box. // Early evening, / my mother and I welcomed him / into the foyer.”

Essay |

“The Way to Loreto — A Very Brief Poetics of the Fathomless”

“The Loreto-Principle states that it is impossible for a historiographer who sets out on a pilgrimage from Rome to Loreto to ever reach his destination. He will ineluctably get lost on the way.”

Poetry |

“Resilience V” & “Lying Flat”

“‘We don’t want to see ourselves in five years.’ Tired of building their platforms, all the young people began to slump in their chairs.”

Literature in Translation |

“Onwards,” “Too Philosophical,” “Doll,” “The Comfort of Complaining,” “The Benefits of Talking,” “To a Writer,” “Self-Reflection” & “I Wish I Had”

“How ghostly my life / in its fall and rise. / Always I see myself waving to myself, /’ floating away from the one waving. // I see myself as laughter, / as deep mourning again, ‘/ as a wild weaver of talk; / but all this falls away.”

Literature in Translation |

“Sacred Sun,” “My Language,” “Poetry’s Silence” & “X-Askuñ”

“They ask me about my language, how it is made. / I tell them they should carry a pitcher to the creek. // They want to know about this wailing. / I tell them to walk in a place of rocks.”