When summer began between my junior and senior year in high school, my life felt complicated. Then Mrs. Grogan stripped naked in front of me and complicated it even more.

It started with Carol Mayfield. Our freshman year, Carol, who had probably been beautiful from the day she was born, blossomed in all the right places. All the girls wanted to be her friend. All the boys just wanted her. If rumor had it right, she wanted them, too, and any guy old enough to take her on a car date received a gift from her the likes of which he'd never received before. Despite what I liked to believe about myself, I was a little naïve about and more than a little awkward around girls. Even when I got my license, I didn't dare ask her out. By early in our junior year she settled in with one guy, David Taylor, and by the end of that year everybody said they'd probably get married someday.

But during the last few weeks of the school year, Carol had been flashing me glimpses of her lovely flesh. She doled those treats out daily: a short skirt that rode up too high when she sat in the desk across from me in English, or a split skirt that fell open too far when she slipped into that desk, or a loose blouse that gapped at the top when she dropped a pen and leaned down in front of me to pick it up, or a hand gently touching my shoulder or elbow as we spoke in the hallway, or even a brush of boob against my arm as we walked toward class. On purpose, always on purpose, that was clear.   Continue…

A lone boy in combat fatigues gripping a submachine gun was standing guard down by the pool. He smiled bashfully and waved up at Capdevila, but Capdevila did not wave back; instead, he pulled his head in, closed the window, and went on watching his daughter with his sad, tired eyes. She hadn't moved for two days. All she did was sit there gazing at the bay and the sky. She wouldn't accept water, and she didn't talk or sleep.

Physically, there seemed to be nothing wrong with her, although Capdevila refused to call a local doctor and make sure. He wanted to get her back to Spain—or anywhere away from this tropical hell. The Capdevilas had been about to make a move when word had come that the hotel was under military control and all guests would be confined to the premises.

He sat on the bed and tried speaking to his daughter. "Marina," he said. "We want to help you. Tell us what it is you're going through. Tell us what happened at the Falls that day. Share with us. Marina, can you hear?"

The girl's features didn't react. She was not grim or sullen. Rather she had a contented, placid look about her—and this frightened Capdevila the most.   Continue…

In a reply to an inquiry from the Prince of Sung, Chu Juyi, one of the compilers of The Bronze Lantern, explains why, despite its fame, he chose to exclude Chen Hsi-wei's "Letter to Yang Jian" from the anthology. "This poem," he writes, "is nothing like Hsi-wei's other work. It lacks his customary tact, subtlety, and indirection. Usually, the poet fixes his eye on details of the world and lends them a patina of use and familiarity through his verse. He writes of quiet moments and ordinary things. The interminable wars going on in his youth can certainly be felt in his poems but they are fought offstage, as when he concludes a description of early spring by writing Horses stamp on the dried-out roads. / Armies begin to march. Hsi-wei's meanings are like shadows cast by mountains, trees, and those small objects he disposes with such care. The 'Letter to Yang Jian,' on the other hand, could hardly be more blunt, its purpose more obvious, its violence more brutal. Even knowing the letter is signed, I still find it difficult to believe it is the work of Chen Hsi-wei. The clue as to why the poet abandoned his accustomed manner in the 'Letter' may lie in a tale told about how he came to write it and why he circulated copies of it throughout Northern Zhou." Chu Juyi goes on to relate a remarkable, probably fanciful, story about the composition of Hsi-wei's renowned open letter to the future Emperor Wen.

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The village of Kuo-ling lay on the old road between Ch'angan to the west and Shan to the east. The place was hardly large but it could boast an inn called Tong Yun, The Red Clouds. What travelers spent kept the village afloat even in hard times. Consequently, the innkeeper, a fat widower named Chung, was highly respected.

On arriving in Kuo-ling, Hsi-wei went directly to The Red Clouds and asked this Chung for his humblest accommodation. As he was addressing the innkeeper, he happened to glance into the cool shade beyond the portico. Atop a bright red sideboard he saw a painted clay statue, a smiling Buddha. Hsi-wei remarked on it.

Chung clapped his hands together. "Ah, my happy Buddha. You recognized him, yes? Three years ago a pair of monks converted me, though I'm still looking high and low for enlightenment. Those monks were making their way back from a pilgrimage to the West and, according to what they told me, the statue was made someplace beyond the T'ien mountains. The good monks, of course, had no money for lodging, nor would I have taken any. All the same, they insisted on making me a present of the statue. Would you care to look at my little Buddha more closely?   Continue…

From tipping the restaurant waiter to scouting out the habitats of his country's most exotic plant life, the delightful Alphonse seemed content to carry all our obligations on his scraggy shoulders. At the end of an internal flight, we didn't even have to exert ourselves to pick up our suitcases from the baggage carousel. Alphonse summoned a couple of barefoot porters and pointed them in the direction of the Naturetours luggage labels and we didn't have to do a thing until we were reunited with our luggage at the next hotel.

"I could get used to this," said Ivan.

I sighed. "I know just what you mean."

Alphonse led us through the terminal building, hardly bigger than the Socks-R-Us franchise at Heathrow, to the 4x4 waiting in the shade, its engine purring. We climbed into the welcome cool of the air-conditioning: Katie and Morris together with Lou on the middle row behind the seats for driver and guide, Ivan sandwiched between me and Ray at the back. Once he'd seen us settled, Alphonse excused himself to go and attend to our permits for the park. The driver sloped off for a smoke.

Katie got out her diary. Ray opened the paperback he'd been reading on the plane. I stared out the window. There wasn't much to see here: just the breeze-block wall of the airport building and a group of teenage girls lounging on the corner, their wild edges muted by the tinted glass.

"I'll swap seats if you like," said Ivan. "You and Ray can sit together."   Continue…

Over the weekend a kid committed suicide. He climbed to the top row of the football stadium—which is a huge stadium, it must be at least eight or ten stories tall—and jumped off on the street side, flying off to the west, falling, and smashing up dead on the sidewalk. The campus paper had a big story about it, which I didn't read, though I did hear my boyfriend talk about it. He said it would've made more sense if the guy had killed himself during football season.

Anyway, the guy died on Saturday. The newspaper story was on Monday. Then on Tuesday my first class was an English class, a writing class, and right away the teacher started talking about the suicide, as if it had just happened.

"When I was here as an undergraduate," the teacher said, "people here used to jump off the tower of the main building." She took a long drink from a cup of coffee and looked out the window. "But now there's a big fence around the observation deck up there, and you can't jump off, so I guess kids are looking for the next best thing."

The teacher, Charlotte Griffin, was a writer, a novelist, though of course I hadn't read any of her books. I never have time to read. School takes up too much time! She was very pretty, though, small and compact with streaks of natural gray though dyed auburn hair. She was from Tennessee or North Carolina or someplace back east, and had a low, slow, strong voice and a deep accent.   Continue…

He was older than she was. It was clear theirs was a second marriage. She was a comely looking woman, well dressed with a mink trimmed hat. He wore jeans, a long sleeved sweater over a white shirt and a three quarter length leather coat. He was considerably taller than she, and had a full head of white hair. She was crying and showing everyone their wedding picture. He was obviously in the military when it was taken. He was in uniform and had a chest full of medals.

Exactly why she thought it necessary to show that photograph was an indication of her feelings about where they were, and about where she thought the people in the shelter were, relative to her. They were beneath her and the possibility that she might have to spend time among them had brought her to tears.

They were assigned the two beds next to my wife, Anita. The woman showed her the photograph; then showed it to me, still in tears. The man introduced himself. His name was Henry; hers was Dominique. They lived in Bell Harbor, an area in the Rockaways that was being pounded by hurricane Sandy. I didn't ask why they were in the city during the storm or how they happened to land in the shelter located in Hunter College's gymnasium. None of my business.

Anita and I are octogenarians. Neither of us wanted to be in the shelter. But we were evacuated from our building in the Battery Park area because it was considered vulnerable to both a power loss and a surge from the nearby Hudson River. What Dominique and Harry saw was a couple of hundred beds with people in them, some completely covered from head to toe with a blue emergency blanket, others sitting up and a few huddled together in conversation. But most of the people were not the kind of people that Dominique was used to; these were obviously street people, and many were black or Hispanic. They were from the lower rungs. How could she possibly sleep amongst them?   Continue…

when my house catches fire in the middle of winter
will they find my poems and blame it on me?   Continue…

as if I've done something wrong.
I did not make the milk jugs leak.
It's not my fault the dogs
rolled in the morning dew and
brought the dampness in.   Continue…

It's the midpoint of 11 and I missed the movie deadline and I don't quite want to go to the gym and I feel strung out somehow. I've had too much information. I've had too little food or too much of the wrong kind, some midgrade body fuel that fills the void without fueling up.

The cat sleeps, I should do the same. I should run, I should drive, I should grade these blasted papers. I should run for Congress, I should call an old friend. . . I should wait 'til morning. I've had too much information and too little exercise. . .except I had too much earlier. . . and now I have too little time to do too much work on a paper. I have too much to do and too few sources and two eyes that are flash burned from too much black on white text. I've had caffeine and a little sugar. I've slept, but not enough. I'm sleepy, but not enough. I'm handsome, but not enough. I'm old fashioned, but not enough. I'm too hip to things that aren't hip anymore. I'm roundly despised and universally adored for nothing. I'm reviled for what I am perceived to be, my perceptions are preconceived. My conceptions are imperceptible.   Continue…

breath streams rivers oceans
into your lungs and out
into yellow-blue mornings
into deep rocky canyons and
into the leaves and roots of an aspen forest   Continue…