#AmericanWriters
He made a line on the blackboard, one bold stroke from right to left diagonally downward and stood back to ask, looking as always at no on… in particular, “What have I done?…
Brooklyn, 1929. Of course Crane’s been drinking and has no idea who this curious Andalusian is, unable even to speak the language of poet… The young man who brought them
If you were twenty-seven and had done time for beating our ex-wife and had no dreams you remembered in the morning, you might
3-foot blue cannisters of nitro along a conveyor belt, slow fish speaking the language of silence. On the roof, I in my respirator patching the asbestos gas lines
Numb, stiff, broken by no sleep, I keep night watch. Looking for signs to quiet fear, I creep closer to his bed and hear his breath come and go, holding
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…
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…
In Havana in 1948 I ate fried dog believing it was Peking duck. Lat… in Tampa I bunked with an insane… who kept a .38 Smith and Wesson i… In the same room were twins, oiler…
All the way on the road to Gary he could see where the sky shone just out of reach
When he gets off work at Packard,… outside a diner on Grand Boulevar… a bit depressed, and smelling the… on his own breath, he kisses her c… on her left cheek. Early April, a…
We stripped in the first warm spri… and ran down into the Detroit Riv… to baptize ourselves in the brine of car parts, dead fish, stolen bi… melted snow. I remember going unde…
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…
My father stands in the warm eveni… on the porch of my first house. I am four years old and growing ti… I see his head among the stars, the glow of his cigarette, redder
Out of burlap sacks, out of bearin… Out of black bean and wet slate br… Out of the acids of rage, the cand… Out of creosote, gasoline, drive s… They Lion grow.
Everyone loves a story. Let’s beg… We can fill it with careful rooms… with things—tables, chairs,… closed to hide tiny beds where chi… or big drawers that yawn open to r…