When the rain starts, we don’t know each other’s names. We share a line on our address and assume that is all. We are an actor in 1J, a doctor in 3C, law school students in the large unit on the fifth floor. We’ve left dark pockets of tiny towns in the Midwest, the Deep South, the West Coast to emerge in this city. We thought we’d like to join its sprawling crowds.
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All hurricanes are cubist: something seeing, something being
seen. A Picasso eye, splitting the world apart.
It seems they don't look at the ocean here,
have maybe gotten used to the smell of brine
as it wafts over gasoline and fried things
and the rumble of the shuttle,
the tired meandering of silver
against the blue of the sky,
of the sea.
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When Hurricane Sandy struck, my childhood home in the Rockaways was hit. Left in charge to clean it up, I experienced an overwhelming torrent of emotion. The storm not only ravaged our homes and belongings, it turned our guts inside out too.
Read MorePersonal narratives reveal the minutiae of an event so epic in scale it escapes understanding. So it is here with the recollections of Sally and John: an artist and his muse. On May 3rd of 2013, they recounted their mutual affection and shared struggles with gentle ribbing and creative interplay.
Read More1. The Dry
(thinking about Lucretius)
When I tried to count the rings the next day
I estimated one hundred years.
Numbers create order, and I sought precision:
40 feet tall
60 inches around at my chest’s height
20 inches in diameter.
Read MoreMy parents live in a small house on a narrow sliver of land that faces the rocky shore of the Long Island Sound and backs up to a marsh, home to swans, egrets, sandpipers and plovers.