The Latin Professor lives in the country drives a little red pickup, fills its box with grass seed, Omalene for his horses, the Georgics of Virgil. The philosophy professor drives a big black pickup. He carries Heidegger, Sartre, Derrida and Foucalt. He needs wide tires, eight cylinders. The German professor rides his bike, his saddlebags … Continue reading
His little son beside him, the philosophy professor pulls his big, black pickup over, halloas at the crazy old poet walking in the twilight. He is taking the boy beyond the city’s lights to the country to watch Venus rising. The old poet trudges along, a fist full of stars in her hand, stars caught … Continue reading
The followers claimed his face glowed with celestial light, so it was forbidden for human hands to depict it. Although he never claimed anything except inspiration, never mentioned resurrection, yet some authorities think he’s back. The Dalai Lama smiles as if he knows, but he’s not telling. Lord Vishnu says he found him incognito wearing … Continue reading
I am at a party, control of which was eaten away at least two hours ago, and, hell, I am the host, the guy who should pull things in, keep them civil, only I’m the one who ate away civility… I yell at my ex-wife who is with a man who used to be my … Continue reading
This was a temple—now a room only a god could fill, no walls, no ceiling. Or this might have been a house. Now a diorama with stick figures in toothpick canoes, two inch bear and cat, a priest in miniscule mask. Or this was a water tower. Or this was a lookout post. What’s vacillation … Continue reading
It is the last night of solitude: I admire the vase of fresh flowers on my one table and sit up late stubbing cigarettes into an old tin can on my porch. The sky feels too wide for fall, too sweaty and open, panting after a full day of sun. I don’t think of anything … Continue reading
I know little of weaving but that I can pull together these strings of loneliness and fashion some sort of shroud to drape across my empty shelves. The hills cradle my house and my half-empty bed, but I am no more a fixed point than love. What is there in a landscape that says settle: … Continue reading
Eventually it comes between us: not the plaster barricade between every tender moment we might have, but the dependence. After the flurry of surgeons and worry of damage there is the carrying of urine, changing of bandage, the creak of crutches and incessant talk of scabs. Like a shabby patch of grass I am stretched … Continue reading
Late afternoon slants, illuminates the worn, white husk of hive and gleams like an incubator bulb on the oval of an egg. This might have been the way I was born to move over my mother and wash from her what was left of painful birth, her legs opened like the old wood cracked with … Continue reading
And what really changed? I slept each night, and each night it was easy, the red-tipped edge of dreams descending into ash. I got a job and friends and lived my life with no distraction. I was happy. My back felt better. I stopped wanting to argue all the time. I read magazines and cereal … Continue reading
Coe Review 