Sketch
I notice the guy sketching even before I sit down, but it’s not a strategic decision at all. When I have a choice I try to sit facing the eye candy, and this guy’s not even close to handsome. But it’s the only available chair in the coffee shop, so I end up facing the...
Instrumental
30088. I’ve had that number memorized for 38 years. The serial number of a flute manufactured by The Haynes Flute Company. When I put the headjoint into the body, sliding the perfectly tuned and turned tube of silver into the perfectly tuned and turned tube of silver—may it be every one of our good fortunes...
Music Lessons
1. PRELUDE, an introductory movement You always had music in your house. Your father had hundreds of classical and jazz record albums–this was long before anyone had heard of cassette tapes, let alone CDs–and subscribed to High Fidelity magazine. Your parents also had season tickets for the symphony, which was pretty good, considering you lived...
Scenes from a Weekend Poetry Conference
Friday Evening, Dressing for Art Never before so much hair in one space, so much hair so carefully out of place, and to arrange a ripped T-shirt to slide over one bare shoulder is an art in itself, as is the negative capability of shawls that fall just far enough. Here are jeans slashed to...
Life Studies
No. 2 You’re supposed to start with the main scaffold of the body. I always begin, however, with the buttocks, then move upward with a small tremor for the spine, and finally plot out the head. My head has no eyes, no nose, no cheekbones. Nobody’s taught me how to draw them; yet somehow I...
Postcard from the Phoenix Zoo
Ruby, the elephant, must have spent much of her time studying that cluster of boulders — a formation the color of pottery before it is fired, a formation known to us as the Papagos — beyond the bars of reinforced steel that surround her. The abundance of red on her canvas testifies to this. Often...
When Aretha Sings …
“It just ain’t no way, baby . . . for me to love you . . . if you won’t let me.” She still sends hot chills up my spine, and I am fourteen again, and it’s Saturday morning, and I’m cleaning our house so I can party that night, and Aretha’s on the hi-fi...
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