The grackle as invisible priest
They possess nothing but two noises— one a skeleton clacking upstairs, the other the shriek of wounded stars. What heartless god curses this summer bird with such a hue and cry? They descend like black angels expelled from heaven, and land like an affront, croaking the rudeness of the blinding sun. Who clothed them in this inky cloak then cast them unsponsored through the air? Two clash over some discarded scraps, lock beaks tight on each other’s throats, then tumble through the dust like cowboys. Their thirst must wait for distant storms. Why no bath, no house to succor them? Every...
Read MoreBefore the Contract
The factories encircled us, like gleaming battleships with many wars to feed. I watched my father wear down from work, a sweat-stain heart bleeding through his t-shirt. By day the workers dreamed of sleep, the bed a balm for weary bones. By night the workers dreamed of work, their astral bodies fitting parts to machines. Sometimes, late at night, they walked among the shadows of leaves, seeking the solace of wounded stars. I know now the world will not end, because it turns on the endless labor of those too tired to die. Yet I did not know this in my heart, my bones, before I signed my first...
Read MoreLeaving the Concert Hall
She is eleven, maybe twelve, but numbers no longer matter, for she has heard Bach and Mozart for the first time, has mastered the mathematics of the wind, the heart’s algebra, where A is not A and need not be, and now her fingers conduct the weather until it shivers with illuminations. She walks, then skips, then spins to a private pantomime that need not reveal itself, for she is the conductor. Silent notes come swirling around her in wizard colors of the new, and the ecstatic leaves whirl in xylophones of dance. She feels her joy float from breath to breath. Bezeled light dazzles round a...
Read MoreFish Cleaning
How many years had it threaded the hunger, eluding death’s stars embedded in the depths of blindness? I had hoped the pull on my slender line was some shy sea maiden tempting me back to innocence. But my father’s rule was clear: You catch it, you clean it, or go hungry. Now his knives, bone handled, lie glittering in the sun, and my fish lies on the cutting board, motionless as leaves in moonlight. My father’s huge hand guides mine down the silver seam and I feel the universe split open and spill its secret in my hands, oozing organs in rich profusion. They resemble slimy jewels, the...
Read MoreWalt Whitman at the Game
Walt Whitman, containing multitudes, spreads his plump rump on the bleachers, his blooming beard caressed by diamond breezes. The umpire raises one hand in benediction. The batter swings and swings again at nothing, then cocks a grin as wide as a blind assumption. The ball soars, high, higher, seeking the looming towers of Manhattan, angles or demons, catchers and pitchers of the winds. In Walt’s eye, the ball, a polished moon, folds into a dove recalling home. Cheers wound the sky in its envy. The grass burns the blades of its desire. Walt Whitman absorbs it all in the visionary marrow of...
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