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A Collection of Eyelashes on Paper

My son trims a curtain of lashes, immures them into a stray year.

A Common Story

“I think he does not care for art; I fancy he has not even read Pushkin.”

A Crow Flies Cleanly over the Cornstalks

The almanac tells them when the moon passes into ghost weather.

A Dark Place

There was no sense in brushing off or any other civilized thing.

A Different Ending

The peanut seller tore sheets out of paperback books to make the cones.

A Dream of Ease

I shoved them one by one, easy as pie yet with care, just shy of mercy.

A Dreamer’s Tale

How welcome my birth must have been to the raw soldier.

A Farmer’s Life: Xiwuqi, Inner Mongolia

For my vacation last summer, I visited the Bateer family in Xiwuqi.

A Human History in the Wilderness

My grandfather committed my grandmother to a mental asylum.

A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route

Neither blood nor belonging accounted for my presence in Ghana.

A Lebanese Feast

Lebanon’s dreams of a homeland were fading with every rocket launch.

A Local Habitation and a Name

Marie was therefore exiled, as it were, like Cordelia in the old play.

A Lot Going On Up There

The hawk moves out of the way to let a little hot package of breath rise up.

A Marriage Contract

They went to pray for the dead. It was important to shed some tears.

A Matter of Appeal

Felicia knew why he was there. He was waiting. Waiting for her.

A Matter of Vocabulary

“We see you tryin’ to hide. Ain’t no use tryin’ to hide in God’s House.”

A Mother’s Son

“Maybe you should leave the rumba to those who know how to do it.”

A Palazzo in Florence

In Florence I gained a sense of how I might want to spend my life.

A Pandemonium of Want

Widow. I look up the etymology. To separate, split, cleave, divide.

A Pantoum for Alex

The guy who drove the mother to the morgue hands him an empty. Nostrils a little raw, displaced, conscripted, by your Shock and Awe.

A Portion of Your Loveliness

My daughter’s favorite game is Holocaust. She’s quite inventive.

A Separate Set of Signs

Is she dreaming of the rivers soft with codling in her hometown?

A Shrine at the Inn

It was true. We would probably never visit that place again.

A Small Blip on an Eternal Timeline

I grabbed him by the face and told him life only comes to a person once.

A Taste for Winter

She is very rich. She will leave me everything when she dies, he says.

A Wedding Story

The chocolate was old, dusty white, the way chocolate gets after many years.

Across the Sea: A Sequence

The stones here carry the island’s low cry inside them. A landlocked grief.

Act III

It’s there and then it’s gone, just light through the window.

Adventures of a Would-Be Filmmaker

Since I am in my seventies, it is now or never, and I know it.

After Music

“I’m torturing you,” she said. “It isn’t fair.” Now I saw there were tears.