Anthony Deaton is currently the Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Windhoek, Namibia. He has worked as a Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. diplomatic corps, currently posted as Vice Consul to Naples, Italy from 2005-2007. Then as a Political Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria from 2008-2010. His past awards […]
Except in dream, where the torn ligature between cause and effect protects us. The body falls into darkness and the darkness pitched in time. Time, the up-rushing ground we never hit, but instead fly over or wake. Every day dire with consequence enough; blame and decay are not freak visits, like May snow or dog […]
You, who are only vaguely familiar, summoned not as dream but afterthought, who passes in newly pressed shame—where are you going? I thought I knew you at first. Almost as a memory fleeing through the schoolyard’s jeering hoots, the shadowy catch-as-catch-can antics left over from boyhood. Almost I was certain when, ducking under […]
Do you see me through the window? Here, half-clothed in sunfall and half again in the cool summer shade of my room, I am at work on heaven. The heavens, rather, since on this globe, rotate those star-leanings known now by astronomers everywhere, and not that divine circular […]
Do you believe, as I do, that what is beautiful today is also ugly today, and tomorrow won’t admit the difference? Tomorrow will know only one condition at a time, in any given place, on the face of any living thing: my child was a beautiful child. Sitting in the stuffed green chair, the […]
For this reason hail in June and how we read the season jeremiad or excuse to shelter in the park gazebo as white granular ciphers written hectic and sky-bitten over the well-mannered lawn spell birdsong despite it all or because of it perhaps grackles crowd lower boughs keen and scold […]
Then weeding through birthroot in the neighbor’s flower patch. Again, pole-dancing at the Pink Pussycat. Once in Prague at a distance one fall, cramming yourself and child onto the number six tram and I thought to call out or recant, somehow, our widening elliptical paths, but it was never you to begin with. A […]
An early snow and winter comes into kilter. On the tomato vine I seeded too late in summer, and forgot in […]