A Match Ill-Met

Many writers and painters and creative people of all types say they don’t want their thinking to outdo their doing. Minimal self-consciousness is their goal, and they don’t want to be distracted by matters outside the work. Let the particulars of style and technique take care of themselves, they mean to focus on [...]

Faded Ad

An ad for what was once a new way
to dry clean now pales in the window.
A suited man and pant-suited woman
still pose A-shaped and proud,
though block capitals shout in gray.
Her once colorful blouse,
his conservative jacket
are shades of butterscotch.
I pass that window everyday
and sometimes approach hoping
they have become ghosts at last,
their exhortations silent at last.
The owners [...]

A Eulogy for George Carlin

Perhaps my favorite George Carlin routine was his rant on “stuff.” As was often the case in his routines, he starts by alerting his audience to the absurdity of something and then, in a torrent of repetitions and distinctions, overwhelms you. By the end, he exhausts the word… and [...]

Painting an Old House

The places where paint chipped
I glimpse the wood,
the grain a confession
of wood’s true nature
as if, palms proffered,
it means to convince me—
“I’m holding nothing.”
I’m holding the brush,
which pushes a bead of paint
over the gap. This white is
the sort of silence
perfect from a distance,
a way to do things,
preserving by covering up.
Sometimes I can separate layers,
all the [...]

Descriptive as Hell

I‘m teaching summer school right now, leading some rising freshmen through their summer reading while helping them learn some of the essential skills they’ll need in English in the fall. As is my custom, I’ve also been doing some assignments with them, including one described in this prompt on The Catcher in the Rye:
Stradlater’s [...]

Going West on North Ave.

Summer and the city
seems to empty, spirit
leaking by drips and
people seeping
into the space at their feet.
Everyone left
marches east to the lake,
so sure, so right
in their direction. Only I
walk the other way,
fighting the sun,
carrying a book
as if it were the ark,
dreaming of reasons
to go inside.

Too Able

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World includes a character named Helmholtz Watson, a eugenic specimen so perfect his superiors describe him as “able, perhaps too able.” All of the novel’s main characters have imperfections, but Watson’s may be the most interesting, as he is a writer and thus in the position to suggest Huxley’s view of [...]

Landmark

A two-track dirt road
ran beneath electrical towers
near Queen of Peace. The buzz
could have been God or insects
gathering for reasons
we couldn’t be told. Our bikes
steered themselves there
because every circle
was tangent to their lines.
Where they came from
or where they were going,
every origin and destination,
tussled in their interference.
Under their widespread arms,
we kissed for the first time—
eyes closing [...]

Confessions of a Grade Inflater

Before assigning final grades, I steel myself for cusp numbers—each 76.3 and 89.5 and every other figure landing between A, B, C, and the oh-so-subtle levels of the letters. It’s absurd to think my year-end assessment accurate to the tenth, yet many students—particularly the most ambitious, hard-working, and conscientious ones—care deeply about that tenth.
I [...]

Chicago June

The day slows after a sleepless night,
and conversation arrives like whale song.
The watery lullaby reminds me—
we hear without words, we understand.
Outside leaves shift in a humid breeze
and the milky light of a summer morning.
Later the sun’s rays will burn unimpeded,
but now, a neighbor sits on his steps,
reads the paper, raising his head only
when air conditioners [...]