August Kleinzahler

I would rather have been Dufy with these sails and darkening clouds – well, not Dufy, and this is not Le Sud: better, say, Cranach, had he been given to painting sails against the day’s last light. Perhaps there is a kind of sail in Mary’s eyes, poor thing. The Baltic night is moving in, dragging its sombre quilt behind like a filthy bridal train. I would rather have enacted...

Lucia Berlin is a Western writer, by which I do not mean a genre writer of cowboy tales like Zane Grey or the younger Elmore Leonard, but that her stories, with only a few exceptions, are situated west of the Great Plains or in Mexico. Berlin herself was born in Alaska and spent most of her childhood in Chile – a setting for several stories. The daughter of a mining man, she also lived in Montana, Idaho, Arizona and Texas. El Paso, in Texas, is revisited time and again in her writing. Her adult life has been spent in New Mexico, Mexico and the San Francisco Bay Area, chiefly Oakland, and she now lives in Boulder, Colorado.

For Brighde

The japonica and laurels tremble as the wind picks up out the west-facing wall of the old natatorium, made wholly of glass. The swimmer takes her laps, steady and sure through a blur of turquoise and importunings of chlorine. The large room itself now darkens, lit as it is by natural light, as the storm clouds press closer toward land.

Back and forth, the solitary...

Before the heat and after The little pink beeper shop and the flamingo In the logo Same colour as the icing on the cookies inside And the votive candles that heal bad sprains Also, the billboards overhead Through the dusty branches Big square decals mounted against sky A bit of nose here, some lettering Jesus or barbecue Exit 205 Cobalt blue background cut out of...