The ground dove stuttered for a few steps then flew up from his path to settle in the sun-browned branches that were now barely twigs; in drought it coos with its relentless valve, a tiring sound, not like the sweet exchanges of turtles in the Song of Solomon, or the flutes of Venus in frescoes though all the mounds in the dove-calling drought
All middle age invisible to us, all age passed close enough behind to seize our napehairs and whisper in a voice all thatch and smoke some village-elder warning, some rasped-out Remember me . . . Mute and grey in her city uniform (stitch-lettered JUVENILE), the matron just pointed us to our lockers, and went out. ‘What an old bag!’ ‘Got a butt on you, honey?’ ‘Listen,
I am thinking of an early summer. I am thinking of wet hills in the rain Pouring water. Shedding it Down empty acres of oak and manzanita Down to the old green brush tangled in the sun, Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard. Or the hot wind coming down from Santa Ana
Running off with the boy at the gas station, yellow-haired, clear-eyed, with a pair of hands nothing, you understand, would prove too much for, is, it seems, a simple enough solution.
Consequences never enter your thinking at the start. Whatever the implications of the act, of the speed with which you act, all one knows, and all one chooses to know,
It’s a fine fact that whenever I sit in a tavern corner sipping a grappa, the pederast’s there, or the kids with their screaming, or the unemployed guy, or some beautiful girl outside—all breaking the thread of my smoke. That’s how it is, kid, I’m telling it straight, I work at Lucento. But that voice, that sorrowful voice of the old man (forty-ish, maybe?) who shook my hand
The edge of our bed was a wide grid where your fifteen-year-old daughter was hanging gut-sprung on police wheels a cablegram nailed to the wood next to a map of the Western Reserve I could not return with you to bury the body reconstruct your nightly cardboards against the seeping Transvaal cold
Falling in love with a mustache is like saying you can fall in love with the way a man polishes his shoes which, of course, is one of the things that turns on my tuned-up engine
The sun is high, the seaside air is sharp, And salty light reveals the Mayan School. The Irish hope their names are on the harp, We see the sheep's advertisement for wool, Boulders are here, to throw against a tarp, From which comes bursting forth a puzzled mule. Perceval seizes it and mounts it, then The blood-dimmed tide recedes and then comes in again.
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