I’m not sorry that today is the beginning of fall. I’m not sorry I can’t see what floats above New Jersey or the George Washington Bridge. Nor that I sat for eleven hundred miles so I could be here watching black birds graze among acorn husks on my back lawn. The squirrels wake me and […]
I led a blind man astray this morning, took him to the middle of an open field then drove away. I took candy from a child then pushed him into a puddle. I took change from a fat panhandler then told the police to arrest her for loitering. Tomorrow I’ll give a stranger the […]
You are my 5th Avenue You are my 6th my 8th my Broadway You are my grain of salt my steak boiled baked and fried potatoes my sweet corn on the cob You are my border crossing You are my trans-Atlantic flight the long layover between London and Bilbao You are my new pair of […]
Do not look for ink, a wild iris, book jacket or fish, but the space between button holes on a worn shirt, the waitress, her fingers touching your fingers, her veins, her dress, your eyes, the plate. Think of the words you recited, their order on that crisp morning they rose like flame […]
I I am in Iowa, on the edge of town and all the space in the world will never help. Or the sunlight. Or the omelets I make for my wife so she can remember La Gran Via and Las Ramblas. She wants to be a […]
When I return as an ant or quarter inch of head lice, I’ll have learned that mountain beyond I wanted to climb is even bigger now. I’ll know the width and length of a horseshoe just in case. I’ll remember how the Egyptians made paper, and I tried too, but kept swallowing the […]
for William Schwarting The machine shed is damp, the dirt floor milled to powder from years of boot and tractor and machine traffic. I look for the spade I used when I was young, when my grandfather said dig and I dug holes the depth I’d been taught so the posts would stand, hold […]
Curtis Bauer, author of the poetry collection Fence Line, recommends two poets to explore.