#AmericanWriters
You pull over to the shoulder of the two-lane road and sit for a moment wonderin… where you were going in such a hurry. The valley is bur…
The sour daylight cracks through m… “Stephan! Stephan!” The rattling… Comes on a trot, the cold tray in… Toast whitening with oleo, brown t… Yesterday’s napkins, and an opened…
My father and mother, two tiny fig… side by side, facing the clouds th… in from the Atlantic. August, '33… The whole weight of the rain to co… of all that has fallen on their ho…
The man who stood beside me 34 years ago this night fell on to the concrete, oily floor of Detroit Transmission, and we stepped carefully over him until
We stand in the rain in a long lin… waiting at Ford Highland Park. F… You know what work is—if you’re old enough to read this you know w… work is, although you may not do i…
Everyone comes back here to die as I will soon. The place feels r… since it’s half dead to begin with… Even on a rare morning of rain, like this morning, with the low sk…
Along the strand stones, busted shells, wood scraps, bottle tops, dimpled and stainless beer cans. Something began here
The air lay soffly on the green fu… of the almond, it was April and I said, I begin again but my hands burned in the damp ea… the light ran between my fingers
The ship that took my mother to E… Eighty-three years ago was named “… She remembers trying to eat a bana… without first peeling it and seein… in the hands of a young Scot, a se…
We don’t see the ocean, not ever,… when the worst heat seems to rise… of this valley, you could be walki… when suddenly the wind cools and f… you get a whiff of salt, and in th…
The stone says “Coors” The gay carpet says “Camels” Spears of dried grass The little sticks the children gat… The leaves the wind gathered
One was kicked in the stomach until he vomited, then made to put back into his mouth what they had brought forth; when he tried to dr…
Something has fallen wordlessly and holds still on the black drive… You find it, like a jewel, among the empty bottles and cans where the dogs toppled the garbage…
The day comes slowly in the railya… behind the ice factory. It broods… one cinder after another until eac… glows like lead or the eye of a do… possessed of no inner fire, the br…
Shake out my pockets! Harken to t… Of that calm voice that makes no s… Take of me all you can; my average… May make amends for this, my low e… But do not shake, Green Thumb, as…