Passing

Why is it important that the day Michael Landon died I was standing half-naked in Lee Bennett’s bathroom examining my newly budding breasts?  A constellation fixed in memory: how my grandmother had bought me a pink-and-black bikini the day before on the first chilly morning of the Northwest summer, and I had tried it on for her and for my mother—that one time—under the harsh light of a Target fitting room.  (read on…)

DES BAINS, EXCELSIOR

Beacons, landmarks, simply
familiar and vast, milk-white and brown-red.
You have walked on the stretch of beach
between them for ages, they have been
the richness of a near horizon and you want
to praise their quiet lavish stillness
towering among the rows of thick pines.
Praising them you understand
how things can become people and gods,
just seeing them while walking is all,
they keep on remarking your ongoing pilgrimage.
Even two mute buildings in winter.
You want your praise to sound as a blessing, you want
to hear yourself calling them “dear Sirs”.
You need to bless your ages of walking up and down
between the two massive lords of the strand,
their gaze pensive and watchful in their tapestry of windows
under whose scrutiny you sense your double
stalking you somewhere, transparent and elated
along the infinity of that stretch, waiting
for the best instant to click back into you,
becoming one with your gait among the many sea shapes.
(read on…)