Lucky she was, not to spend time in an Iranian
Jail, fortunate to emigrate and meet my brother
And fall in love, a Jew and an Iranian
When Edgar said, “Yes, us too,” I was surprised that he and Miriam were calling it quits; but even more by his “too,” which linked their separation to Renée’s and mine….
We are both losing something.
I am losing him,
he is losing himself.
A light quaked on earth, because when the waitress
gasped and blushed, we gasped and blushed,
sitting in the plush dark aisles to our interiors.
An orange glow back-lights the sky before dawn
with approaching newness made of blue. The world
still drips from a perfect midafternoon rain arriving
yesterday to carry into dark.
We oddly felt we’d come home when, having left behind the dreadful heat and crowds of Rome, we settled into a rented house in Umbria, a sturdy little structure built in 1434
Have you ever dreamt you had sex with someone
you aren’t remotely interested in,
like a guy you work with or one of your husband’s friends
When I said, I miss America
I meant that what is nestled in my brain feels like a harbor.
We’re all strangers. But after a while,
you get used to it. You become deeper
strangers. That’s a sort of love.
I think back to those nights in Buck Lane, the melodramas of sex and desire, the intense affections but also the cruelties … the ruthlessness of self-absorption.
Maybe that is what he was after,
my father, when he arranged, ten years ago,
to be discovered in a mobile home
with a woman named Roxanne, an attractive,
recently divorced masseuse.
Theirs was the one with the noisy bedsprings.
How does a child solve a riddle like that?
Scritchity-screech
—are they fighting again?
On the magical coast of Central California, a grandmother reflects on a life filled with art, love, and tragedy.
Valerie and Alan have been married 57 years. Eternity is a look at love that lasts a lifetime, whether they like it or not.