August Kleinzahler

There’s only one naked lady left, going to ruin out there in the fog amid the dahlias and lavender, its pink trumpet flowers wilted and in tatters. There used to be a couple of dozen of them blooming in the yard every August. Not much else was out there in the yard doing much of anything so the ladies made quite a spectacle of themselves, like Rockettes in a dusty frontier town. The...

There’s a window, 36 hours or so, not even, after travelling by air between places, places where you’ve lived for a long time. When you’ve landed and into the next day, perhaps the evening – then you begin to lose it. It goes very quickly, decaying like a tone in the air. But for a while, inside that window, you’re hyper-awake. I’m talking about light,...

It’s simply untrue, Maecenas, that I do not care for nature. A vile canard: I do, but not unadorned. I need architecture, streets, and, not least, the human form, to frame, contrast and ornament. A birch among a sea of birches does not enchant. Rather, give me a birch, say, over there in the moonlight, to the left of the belvedere, by itself or part of a small stand, with...

They didn’t look like hoods, more like mid-career bureaucrats, fortyish, chubby, thick glasses. But they’d brought two good-looking molls with them; I can’t imagine they were even 18: blonds, Marty and Will. It fell to me to keep the boys entertained while my brother retired to his bedroom with the two Mafiosi for what was to be a very, very serious conversation. My brother...