Thumbtack

I was there because my shoes needed scuffing, and because the air that summer was humid and bug-clotted and I had decided that I would not…

Letters to a Young Poet: An Addendum

Hotel Foyot, 33 rue de Tournon, Paris 8 January 1925

The Egg

When I woke up in the morning, there was an egg.

GOD OF WHEAT

I slattern bramble and wood and moss and amber and sap and milk and buck every frond and arching stem.

How to Pass a Drug Test

Coke and pills are fine unless you’re pissing tomorrow. Even heroin is ok.

Beastly Soup

My son:

Your name — the same now. . . how many years? Your mummy and I decided to name and feed you as we…

Clean

She began to enjoy strange flavors, beginning with snuck slices of raw potato tongued from the edge of a paring knife. It was March, a week after…

Black Walls

Every time Henry would listen for sounds coming from his neighbor’s rooms, pressing his ear against the cold, dark iron walls, he would…

Coziness

Across the violent waves of the break you’ll see a capsized dingy. With binoculars the turning boat will appear shuddering in the downward…

from The Somnambulist

From a notebook, undated:

Accident, 1963: art’s not so abstract after all.