Excerpts
Fatherhood, Beginnings
Sometimes when I’ve been sitting in a different room for a while I forget I have a child. Then I wander into the humidified air, feel the softness of the blue rug between my toes and place my hand upon his rising chest. What will I tell my son when he asks if I am …
Last of the Cowboy Poets
‘‘You ever written any . . . poetry?’’ Doyle Porterhouse asked. The word ‘‘poetry’’ came out sounding like ‘‘poy-tree.’’ Porterhouse’s head was cocked, his bushy eyebrows all askew; it was as if he were a shy girl asking Lenny Halperin to the prom. ‘‘Of course. You bet I have,’’ Lenny said. That was a …
On a Day That Bombs
On a day that bombs were being dropped by drone aircraft in several regions of Libya, blowing apart fragile bodies, many of whom were living their sincere and momentary lives, it was a perfect day here except for the wind and the flies. The flies were too large to ignore. It was 73 degrees. The …
The Wittenberg Backdoor Bar
For my seventieth birthday my daughter transforms our living room into a bar— black sheets over windows, candles on small tables, the family gathered. She has provided a karaoke player to fulfill my old dream to sing love songs into a microphone. I’ve entered through the back to croon “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” while …
Our Lady of the Midnight Kitchen
Beans float like baby Jesuses in the soup. I get a call from a lost one-eyed cousin: he says the world is big enough in one place. I was sleeping in a cold room when the sun came up. My eyes were open, my mouth bloody, full of cat-claws and nettles. Always my life unravels …
Nick Flynn. The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands. Graywolf Press.
If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred. —Walt Whitman Configurations and reconfigurations of the body permeate Nick Flynn’s newest collection: from the minute components of the individual to the physical circumstances of bodies in conflict, these lyric poems exalt the physicality of our existence in the tradition of Whitman while blurring it …
Minotaurs on Holiday
Florentina had grown up in Buenos Aires but had come here, to the world’s bottom, the southernmost city in the world, at the beckoning of a man who ran stables and owned a horse named Picasso. Don Julio took tourists and huasos for week-long treks on horseback and came back dead silent and in need …
The Girl with No Nightmares
Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status. —Sir Ken Robinson So the girl they’ve been protecting, the one they’ve kept at the clean brick house on the hill surrounded by the scenic pine trees to the west, the pristine green fields with no power …
Orpheus in the Harbor
There’s nothing here that you’d absolutely have to have seen: I don’t like it here for the monuments: but because of the hours where you’re deeper in Venice than even on the Rialto: On the hostel’s hill, your ear sharpened to the tune of stars ringing over the harbor— even if too far off, so …