Quindecagon (audio only)
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What [Friends ask us why] (audio only)
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2008
Albany
For Cliff Silliman
If the function of writing is to "express the world." My father withheld child support. forcing my mother to live with her parents. my brother and I to be raised together in a small room. Grandfather called them niggers. I can't afford an automobile. Far across the calm bay stood a complex of long yellow buildings, a prison. A line is the distance between. They circled the seafood restaurant, singing "We shall not be moved." My turn to cook. It was hard to adjust my sleeping to those hours when the sun was up.
1983
What [The flower sermon]
The flower sermon: critique is like a swoon but with a step increase, the awkward daughter who grows to join the NBA. All we want (ever wanted) was to be on that mailing list, parties at which slim caterers offer red, yellow, black caviar spilling off the triangular crackers while off on the bay rainbow-striped sails dip and bob and twist. The woman in the yellow raincoat sits on a bench at the edge of the schoolyard while two small children race across the asphalt plaza. Too many books sail the moth. A tooth that's lost while flossing. A short line makes for anxious music.
1988