Category: Yo Ivanhoe

  • Walking Backwards Into Babylon

    It’s pretty obvious by now that I’ve run out of gas. I think everybody has run out of gas. The only thing more depressing than a baseball team playing out the string in late September is a baseball team from which you expected big things playing out the string in September. It messes up your…

  • From The Ruins

    There will come a day, mark my words, when every conceivable disappointment will meet in a giant hangar somewhere in Kansas. Every dashed dream and broken heart from all over America will converge there on the edge of some dusty little town to awkwardly mingle and avoid eye contact. Just as in Vegas, in the…

  • Rilke, Badly Mangled, With A Line Stolen Outright From Stevie Smith

    I live my life in shrinking orbits, which move inward from the things of the world. Perhaps I can never fully silence my heart, but that will be my attempt. I am shadow boxing with God, around and around this small, dark room, and I have been plodding in circles for a thousand years. And…

  • That Will Be Fine. I Think That Will Be Just Fine

    Time stands still And we and things go whizzing past it, Queasy and lonely, Wearing dogtags with scripture on them. —James Galvin, “Two Horses and a Dog” We’ll be all right if nothing goes wrong with the lighting. —Robert Frost, from “It Bids Pretty Fair” All day words were swirling, assembling themselves, unbidden, in inspired…

  • Night Stand: Reading In The Dark

    A pair of epigraphs and some random gleanings from the archives of the Wangensteen Medical Library at the University of Minnesota: When I lie down, I say, when shall I arise, and the night be gone? And I am full of tossing to and fro unto the dawning of the day. –The Book of Job,…

  • Gloria Was The Little Girl's Name, And An Accordion Was Her One Fierce Desire

    For many months, on her way to and from school each day, Gloria had paused at the pet shop window to gaze with a combination of adoration and desire at the pretty little accordion nestled there in its kennel. Each night at the dinner table she would beg her parents to let her have an…