The train seems heavier on the tracks tonight although the news is now old news—   the unexpected derision at the local hangout, the two girls who were drinking…

  When I return to the dog, the first thing I see is the teeth. And then the dog disappears. But the teeth remain. Bared. Bereft of dog. The bared…

  We sit beneath a giant maple watching pirouettes of yellow gust upwards, each leaf an illumined skin stretched across a pliable spine. My son spins an apple between his…

  Completely blind since  birth, Laura would stare for minutes into a close-held flashlight beam, press the heels of her thumbs into her eyes so she could ‘see’ the eruption…

  At the bus stop under the horse chestnut, we tally the length of Boyhood against the babysitter's plans for later and, waiting, see the leaves have started to wilt,…

  The first block stretched on with big doors and sometimes a doorman standing in front who smiled or touched his hand to his hat and I hurried past to…

  where Route 100 meets School Street, two cows graze. I've heard Vermonters lend their cows to neighbors—and to the city, it seems—free food for cows, free mowing for the…

  I always knew that Grandma’s grandfather crashed on the cliffs of Newfoundland, and that we are here because he climbed the waves atop a freezing rock and stayed there…

Hampi Resort, India   brushstrokes of wind   blue-gray cacti and the thick teak trees   honeymooners in their hammocks drinking tea that’s mostly milk   black cows white cows…

  No one goes downtown. I see an empty square and name it after you. In the yard of the house you used to live in, the flowers shed petals,…

Lower the shovel and flatten the ground. --Gerald Stern   Mostly, denial, the nerves in abeyance— add one day and a stoop sets in. I churn my shoulders to undo…

  On the beach the shark is dead: its marble eyes leak jelly, its underbelly, slashed, bleeds pinkly onto the sand and flies like copters circle round reporting on the…