Essay |
“Robert Desnos in the Desert”
“This is impossible, but Desnos is standing on the Mexican side of the Stanton Street Bridge, facing downtown El Paso. He is waiting for me to close the distance from one side of the international border to the other.”
Poetry |
“W. G. Sebald’s Last Walk”
“But a return to / Footsteps in chalky / Sand // Recalling vestigium / Meant trace or / Footstep”
Essay |
“Famous Men” and “Sure Can’t”
“So I bought the earrings, which were zircon, which is real and not to be confused with zirconia. Peachy-pink, for grounding, I guess, or healing, or hope, as is usually the case and almost always needed.”
Poetry |
“First Miracle,” “The Kind Stepmother” and “May Snow”
“I wanted everyone / to be unhappy, / like Grandfather Lenin who, obviously, wanted / everyone to be happy, / for when all is said and done we wanted the same thing: / fairness …”
Poetry |
“Smoke Day”
“There’s a saying about time when everything is on fire. / The morning entirely blue except one pink slash right where it all starts up.”
Poetry |
“Fantasies in ’56“
“The real goal for me was to turn into Hank: / big arms, a tattoo, and giggly housewives / who blushed and spluttered as I filled up their tanks.”
Poetry |
“Heaven’s Breath” and “Easter Basket”
“I am thinking about the 30 million / living things balanced on a person’s / shoulders in a precarious column 1000 / meters high. Don’t ask me where / I got that fact but it’s a fact and I saw it.”
Essay |
“Æ, the Letter Ash”
“The æsc (ash) tree was felled for spear handles, tablets, charcoal, bedframes, wagon wheels, oars — perhaps this is why the author of the Old English “Rune Poem” in the eighth century observes that the æsc is precious, although many men attack it.“
Poetry |
“[Elegy for My Uncle] or [Oubliette: craniosynostosis]” “[Elegy for My Uncle with Dime Store Turtle and a Scrawl of Desire]” & [Elegy for My Uncle with a Childhood in it]
“I feared it when I had a daughter but she’s okay and I’m okay / and it’s just that an AI is stroking us to death in this primal world // I’m glad / he never knew that …”
Poetry |
“wish” and four untitled poems
“wandering on both ends of the world / my body is a channel / one end flowing toward a black ocean / the other tied with a bright ribbon of sunlight”
Essay |
“The Sky of His Mouth”
“He became fascinated with the music and poetry of Tupac Shakur at some point in the 90s after hearing ‘Dear Mama’ on the radio. He also found it a lot easier to get his students interested in Tupac than Delmore Schwartz and Robert Lowell.”
Interview |
A Dialogue With Anne Marie Macari
“My way of working is to let things grow in the dark, to let the unknown do its work, though that’s where all my doubt and impatience arise as well. But really I don’t have a choice — the material has to take on a certain amount of life before I can work with it. And then something triggers the poems to emerge, some sound, word or memory.”
Poetry |
“neap tide — spring”
“what if an old wife is what / is necessary to predict the weather // dried sugar kelp can predict the weather / for example — the rocks here winter / woven with it …”
Poetry |
“His Shaving Cuts” “Practice” and “Without You”
“First pretzels I’ve eaten without you — / leg cramps, so our son said they’d help, / the salt, which people called me in contrast / to sweet you …”
Essay |
“Conserving Michelangelo”
“A diagonal tear crosses from the arches on the left to the robe of the figure on the right, then disappears — as if a bird had suddenly flown through Michelangelo’s studio and he, taking its path for a sign, had put it in.”