Since I don’t know who will be re… this or even if it will be read, I… invent someone on the other end of eternity, a distant cousin labo… under the same faint stars I labor…

My father and mother, two tiny fig… side by side, facing the clouds th… in from the Atlantic. August, '33… The whole weight of the rain to co… of all that has fallen on their ho…

The last of day gathers in the yellow parlor and drifts like fine dust across the face of the gilt-framed mirror

We don’t see the ocean, not ever,… when the worst heat seems to rise… of this valley, you could be walki… when suddenly the wind cools and f… you get a whiff of salt, and in th…

In borrowed boots which don’t fit and an old olive greatcoat, I hunt the corn-fed rabbit, game fowl, squirrel, starved bobca… anything small. I bring down

The new grass rising in the hills, the cows loitering in the morning… a dozen or more old browns hidden in the shadows of the cottonwoods beside the streambed. I go higher

Here in February, the fine dark branches of the almond begin to sprout tiny clusters of leaves, sticky to the touch. Not far off, about the length

Everyone comes back here to die as I will soon. The place feels r… since it’s half dead to begin with… Even on a rare morning of rain, like this morning, with the low sk…

Down sat Bud, raised his hands, the Deuces silenced, the lights lowered, and breath gathered for the coming storm. Then nothing… not a single note. Outside starlig…

One was kicked in the stomach until he vomited, then made to put back into his mouth what they had brought forth; when he tried to dr…

Three boys down by the river search for crawdads. One has hammered a spear from a curtain rod, and head down, jeans rolled up to his knees, wade…

The doctor fingers my bruise. “Magnificent,” he says, “black at the edges and purple cored.” Seated, he spies for clues… gingerly probing the slack

In Lake Forest, a suburb of Chic… a woman sits at her desk to write me a letter. She holds a photograp… of me up to the light, one taken 17 years ago in a high school clas…

Along the strand stones, busted shells, wood scraps, bottle tops, dimpled and stainless beer cans. Something began here