To the Barnes & Noble in State College — or really, any Barnes & Noble anywhere. Indie bookshops have great charm, but among the corporate chains, there’s no one like B&N. (Well, literally. There’s practically no one else left in business…) THE BOOKSTORE Windows, wide, stretching the length of this hall, brilliant glass, radiant with … Read more
I set out to find my heart on the mappa mundi — the gold-leaf sheen so sharp, black lettering so blotted, I could only wander the world over, wondering if this or that sheen or this or that blot or this or that missing piece was mine.
Here no river flows. It trickles, dammed by ranks of matryoshki hoarding their generations. In me the eggs nest one inside the other, yet here no chambers open, here the river slows. I stand in the ranks and hold the flood and hold my children and hoard my blood.
A while ago I posted a reflection on “problems with the love of comfort,” as inspired by a scene in Crime in Punishment in which Razumikhin ridicules Zossimov for letting himself get slack in the desire for comforts. Chekhov’s “Gooseberries” seems to go in the same direction — though it doesn’t name the problem as love of … Read more
Today’s poem was inspired by the Wednesday prompt from Robert Lee Brewer over at Writer’s Digest. The prompt was to write a poem with the title “This Is [fill in the blank],” and I found myself staring down a vision that spooked me and, naturally, begged to be written. It touches on one of my recurring nightmares, … Read more