No, you can’t move mountains,
and your pounding fists won’t budge them an inch,
but your very presence creates a tidal force,
though no ocean waves will break over those high rocks.
Don’t be flattered, any mass in this universe will do,
for the mathematics that covers your gravity
covers all other gravities just as heavily.
True, mountains remain rigid
and their peaks will never bow before you
yet there is within them
the slightest tension to draw closer.
And this same tension arises
in the earth beneath and the planets and stars above.
No human-made seismograph
can measure the nanodynes of attraction,
but some divine register surely is recording
how all existence is somehow compelled
to gather by your side.
– Richard Fein…
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It’s twilight, and you’re walking with a dog. Your dog. Perhaps the dog, the combination of all the dogs you’ve loved in your life: the golden retriever who destroyed your Barbie dolls when you were a child, the wild wire-haired terrier you adopted as soon as you graduated from college, the beagle you got after your divorce.
The dog runs free, loping ahead of you, returning without hesitation when you call. This is the kind of park that allows dogs to run free, making easy circles under the trees.
It’s twilight, and it’s one of the shoulder seasons, perhaps early fall or perhaps late spring. The air is warm, humid enough to feel soft. Somewhere there’s the scent of flowers. Somewhere there’s a hint of music.…
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Finkelstein put his hand on Jerry’s shoulder.
“That’s all I can tell you.”
Jerry could barely button the buttons on his shirt. His fingers felt like hot dogs and the buttons felt as small as tic tacs. He had come to trust the doctor and had begun to believe he could maybe fix it. Finkelstein snapped the metal clipboard closed and looked at him with big, sad eyes. He hated this part. He always hated this part.
“I’m sorry, Jerry.”
Jerry bumped into the wall on his way out of the examination room and two nurses saw it. He looked at them sheepishly, then realized that embarrassment, along with a whole host of other things, was something he wouldn’t be bothered with much longer.
What was it, anyway? …
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Somehow I thought he’d want to do
different things from what they used to do
together here. But no, a show,
a big Broadway musical show,
is his choice for tonight. Yes,
there are tickets. I was half-hoping not.
And wishing in vain that it was May, not December,
and we were buying for three.
That last spring night we had clear hope
we watched Guys and Dolls in her hospital room.
Though we’d missed the beginning, and her favorite song,
we watched till the end.
She nodded off,
as she always did at home before the tube,
head on his shoulder,
but nodded back in,
to say, surprised, in her everyday voice,
“It’s good,” letting us believe
she was on the mend.
After that, she had just three days more,
and only one in which
she could say a word.…
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– Patrick Goble
Author’s Note: “Behemoth” is a synthesis of the different styles of music I have studied over the years; as such, it borrows from many genres but belongs exclusively to no single one. I’ve never really cared much for the tendency to rigidly categorize music by [sub]genre—doing so leads less to diversity than it does to rigid compositions and performances that are written according to a template. Music is structured, and music is rule-based. Probably more than any other art form, music is mathematically driven. Of course, the visual arts are governed by ratios and the rules of visual perception (particularly in the case of naturalistic art), but I would argue that mathematics runs thicker through the veins of music than it does any other art form.…
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When I was a kid, my brother and I used to call each other horrible names. Our parents forbade us saying “nigger,” so we substituted “jigaboo,” “colored,” “creole,” and “high yellow,” though not in their presence.
Still, words have ways of slipping out, just like if someone tells you never to laugh during a church service, and of course, just as soon as Dr. Winefordner begins preaching, you can’t hold back. So one day while playing puppets with my brother, my puppet, a silver donkey wearing a green hat, called his puppet, a brown horse wearing a red ribbon, a “nigger.” Our mother was in another part of the house and so didn’t hear my puppet, Frances. That was good.
What wasn’t good, however, was that our maid, Dissie, was dusting our room at the moment of the offense.…
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Obama hits on the Swedish Prime Minister. She’s got that ofay blonde hair and her legs go on forever. They’re not really longer than Michelle’s, but Big O’s gotten caught up in the celebration of Mandela’s death. He’s let his hair down and slid into his African self, as if he’d taken a few good draughts of nitrous oxide or absinthe drinks loaded with wormwood, as if he’d torn pieces of Ethiopian spiced goat meat off a larger hunk with his sharp teeth. All the goat meat in the world, he thinks, is his. He’s the most powerful man in the world. He can eat and drink as much as he likes. He can blow up to be as fat as a deposed dictator.
Big O is looking for a slam dunk.…
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