Excerpts
Review of Paul Beatty’s The Sellout
Few novelists write characters as improbably multitudinous as Paul Beatty. In The White Boy Shuffe, Gunnar Kaufman is a poet, basketball player, and messiah. In Tuff, Tuffy Foshay is a drug-slinger, competitive eater, sumo-wrestling enthusiast, and candidate for city council. In Slumberland, Ferguson ‘‘DJ Darky’’ Sowell is a sax player, jukebox sommelier, porn film composer, …
Ten Reasons Why We Cannot Seem to Make Progress
As long as the cheerleader keeps watching the movie about cheerleadersand the businessman keeps a copy of The Art of War in his attaché case. As long as the money retains no memory of where it has beenbut keeps running like a river Until going to war is explained in terms of child development Until …
The Knife and the Knife
A knife loves a knife. It loves in midair, like a thing without feet. The knife that falls in love is not a knife. It is a magnet. Look at them shine as they draw each other in! Two knives scattering sweat let out a cry, cross each other for a moment in midair, lie …
Shoots
From Fatigas tropicales Tree, sprouts. Air, sprouts. Light, sprouts. I have pulleda cluster from my left eye. I rise and eat from curdled fruitsthat taste like Island. I fell the word Island and make a tableto organize my family and exercise the memory of my dead.Flesh, live again. Let crows feed upon youand regain their …
Vision of the Body
For Jorge Angel Pérez Why is it nowas we leave our youthand beauty behinddo I find the bodiesof budding girls and boysso beautiful,the irreverent gaze of others.Now that gray hairs show themselvesand my flesh is less firmmy legs less firmas they outrun death.Now that skin’s glowthe brightness in my eyesand smooth foreheadslowly recede.Now that my …
Some Photos
From Viaje de regreso IAutumn days.On my balconya bonsai blooms. IIMigrating birdslook for place. Somefind the wrong one. IIITenuous light in the courtyard.The clotheslineis a highway. Translated by Margaret Randall
The Creation
Woman was made so clothes would have somethingto wear. So shoes would find company, hair, finely braided, hanging down the shoulders of anunloose woman. A tight-fitting skirt, finding knees Some lappa suit, carved out of unyielding things.Stiff fingers, sewing and sewing, until fabric attaches itself to permanent skin. All the lost hoursand lost sleep, just …
Pelvis with Distance
(Georgia O’Keefe, 1943) Bone and sky:I waited my whole life to be naked Not nude,which means unclothed for the educated,self-deluding eye— that’s not naked,that was putting on clothes of the character I playedto stir the camera’s sighs (a boy’s hips, a boat’s ribs,Breasts like apricots, a coarse curtain of hairto pull or hide behind) while …
Dear Letter
For mother 1.I am writing to tell youthat the burninghas begun. 2.Although it is still cold at night,the lemon treeoutside the kitchen dooralready has white blossoms. 3.Yesterdayon the freewaydriving backI rode over a small buck. 4.Smoke from the firesfilled the inside of my car,even with all the windowstightly shut. 5.There was a small dambeside the …