Yo Ivanhoe

I have two options when, as now, the Muse deserts me (and this has so often been the case of late, and over, say, the last dozen years). Well, actually, I suppose I do have more than two options. I could recognize, for instance, that anyone who uses the phrase “the Muse deserts me,” or … Read more

There are surfaces you can’t get a look under. You see just a flat line, for instance, or a face, or the horizon, but that doesn’t mean there’s not something beneath or beyond them. It never means that. There’s something behind or under everything, depths and layers and distance, and it’s a rare thing that’s … Read more

1) This, Vesithia LaRue said, is not living. Decidedly. Not. Living. Ms. LaRue was in the bar of a Chinese restaurant, where she was sitting straight as a pin at a corner table and bathed in an almost infernal red light. Though she was a non-smoker, she had the mannerisms and dramatic demeanor of someone … Read more

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 … Read more

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 … Read more

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 … Read more

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, … Read more

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 … Read more