Joan E. Bauer: A Thousand Pigeons
Robbie, Paul & I met Carlin at the Hamburger Hamlet in Westwood in 1970. Carlin had a big laugh & shiny hair, but behind the jokes, a serious guy. He … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: Remembering V. S. Naipaul at the Dawn of a Dark Century
The November rain rat-tats, beads on the window. I scratch words, anxious birds on a yellow pad. In your cottage in Wiltshire, perhaps you are writing. Your anguished Asiatic … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: River Dolphin of the Yangtze
We sailed on a river boat down the Yangtze twenty years ago—before the Three Gorges Dam & the rising water lowered the mountains. That day the peaks shrouded with … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: Tribal
Grandpa Joe was nearly born in steerage from Palermo, but landed in Texas. He loved watching Jimmy Durante on TV. The Great Schnozzola, a man of his tribe. … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: Eight Notes on the Rain
Kien waited for death, calmly recognizing that it would be ugly and inelegant. -Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War 1 spring rain, like ether, daubs down memory, mutes … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: Dramatic Monologue — Joseph Brodsky
We tap dance down the highway. There’s an exit. Who made me a pharoah? Dare I gesture — or reach for a cigarette? Shouldn’t I be on the banks … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: Col. John Stapp, Fastest Man in the World
What saved me were those years in Alamogordo when I was nine & ten, unfettered, unsupervised, so I could build wooden carts, play with bows & arrows, roam empty … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: Manzanar
Manzanar for Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, author of Farewell to Manzanar The word, Spanish for apple orchard but by 1942, no orchards in the Owens Valley. Water … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: Dreaming of Prague
I can almost imagine the euforie those first days of Revolution. The crowds at Wenceslas Square. Even the police cheering. Václav Havel riding a pedal scooter through the … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: Birthday in Beijing
April thunderclouds in battleship formation but the rain is light as we touch down. At last, the swarming, noisy, candy- colored streets of the city. Breakfast: soy boiled eggs, … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: Lowell & Bishop — Letters from the Road
The robins are shrieking as they do before a storm she wrote Lowell who wanted to marry her, but she knew better. Come to Yaddo, he wrote. There’s a … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: Exile in Gorky
They gather close, melded, like titanium and iron, in an upholstered chair. Academician Sakharov, upright, Elena Bonner, leaning hard against him. Her face stained with foreboding. His eyes steady. Sakharov’s … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: Progress Street
For Halloween in 1960, I dressed as an election booth festooned with Kennedy stickers & buttons. If you’re a woman over 60 & someone says ‘coat hanger,’ you don’t … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: On the Brink, 1938
A happy vicar I might have been… -George Orwell On the Spanish battlefield, he would crawl on his stomach searching for potatoes. The POUM (Marxist Workers’ Party) made him an … Continue reading
