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Whether or not we agree that the iPod somehow essentializes the twentyfirst century--an intriguing claim, if not intentionally exaggerated--the more general principle underlying that claim is reasonable enough: the idea that one might “read the state of the cultural spirit [Geist] off of the sundial of human technology.” (1)

I don’t really examine things too closely. Everything is not a work of art. I’m not like those academics, those writers that go along looking for the meaning of the world in everything that they find on the street.

I call you my friend, Mr. Python.

A Short Story.

At 10:16 yesterday morning, I received an e-mail from my mother. The message was three sentences long, and only the first four words were in English: Bác Hai is dying.

A Poem.

A Poem.

Two days before, I was alone, thinking about what it must feel like to have a heart that beats when it wants, attune to no one and free to roam around the range of time like a novice drummer. Thinking only about the next lub dub and not about the ...

The thin strap of a duffel bag cut into Milo’s shoulder as he stood on the front step of the old house where he grew up. He studied a painfully new, gold mailbox that dangled a limp newspaper in its protruding tongue. He studied how it contrasted so sharply ...

Looking back, I can recount— although perhaps, at times, incompletely, and often, I admit, sensationally—— a brief episode between my four-year-old self and a close childhood friend: a young girl named Mary, similarly diminished in age and stature, a miniature co-star, with whom I shared an afternoon that I will always remember.

Characters
U
S

I met the faeries in Vermont.

JESUS
Either someone plays Mahomet or I quit!

That’s what I used to tell my interns, anyway. It was such a hoot to watch the queasy dubious looks on their faces as they glanced sideways at each other, speechless. They’d grin at each other, sometimes giggle; other times they just looked sick, or nervous, like I’d taken a piss on the preacher Sunday morning at church—Is he serious?

And imagine my heel a hook
around your ear – my other
against your chest, the rest
of my leg singing. Stay there,

Jakob’s eyes were a prison for my soul. They were tragically beautiful. They were beautifully tragic. There was sadness there, and a wise weariness of the world, and yet somehow a glint of hope. His eyes nearly broke my heart. A sapphire ocean, sweeping me away in a shimmering riptide of tears and fluttering lashes.

He ate all of the beans, slowly. He would examine one shrewdly in his hands and finger it around before putting half of it in his mouth and chewing. He was happy, and reached out toward me with his hands. His hands were rough and callused, like a paper lunchsack or a leather punching glove. The tufts of hair poking over the back of his hands moved over my face, and I felt aroused.

“Mr. Stone was commissioned by the mayor of London to design a “dry garden” of plants and flowers that use less water because England, widely associated with drizzle, is actually drying up.”
“LONDON IS SO DRY,” Wall Street Journal, July 2006

There is a stop light
in front of Weston Autobody;
in evening the autoshop light sears
mechanics.

It has been a week of nouns weakening
in applicability, often adjunct and defunct;
this acronym owes more, to us, than onus.

It could be anyone, the one waiting somewhere for you to love her.
You wait in a dark station, the trains arriving and leaving, knowing nothing of her.

Denver was becoming acutely aware that at this moment in the road trip, where a second wind might have kicked in, not even the slightest of breezes was blowing.
“I know! Lets not go, let’s go somewhere else, we can drive to Tennessee or California, or Texas!â ...

a Palestinian transports wine amphorae West.
state government export programs should be.
implemented as opposed to the arguments.
about policy intervention strategies.
an eager Roman transports wine amphorae East.
execute the social change, “I am invulnerable.
like a trade’mark”, says a Palestinian, the role.
of legal rules is ...

Like a length of string,
like a lily of a day
a firm, fragile thing.

I have written poems
pomes (pennyeach)
like pommes
as in pommes de terre
those roots with eyes—
and now I write
in my eyes, to my eyes
à mes yeux
which means
in another light
‘by my way of thinking’—
and so
to think of you
as something ...

The last few bars
of a big-band tune
exposing themselves
without a hint of self-awareness
and the half-sober apercus of a gaggle
of twenty or so
be-sequined, be-suited
women and men of a certain age
their laughter playing
soft on the southwest wind
that is wrinkling the bay—
everyone saying ...

It’s like a death, but it’s worse. Because this is the last time I’ll speak with you and we’re both angry.

We expect the days like this, but they come only when they like, and carrying their monstrous young inside them, waiting.

The boy has black hair that’s clipped to be unkempt. From a mall bench, he eyes two girls, who wander past in the distraction of gossip and pre-ripped jeans. He wonders which he would prefer. But he stops himself, in curt distaste, when he sees them enter a store ...

A man, Dave
A dog, Charlie
A woman, Alice

—no dialogue is audible—

The action opens on a bright sunny spring day on a residential street of a bustling city. Music: chipper.