medusa the narcissist self-preservation is really something ongoing and terminal they loved taxes they loved death certain things create an emotional reaction self-contemplation is coldly detached apparently the inevitable end of introspection led...

      Tell me again in this ragged midnight that intimacy will endure waters aren't rising and tomorrow the fritillary butterfly will graze my garden tell me that passion is not merely nocturnal but a tsunami of connection    no stormy tea-cup but the...

      Birds Everyone held a bird, except you. A policeman eyed you suspiciously. You followed the crowd into the square. When the clock struck noon, everyone lifted their bird aloft. Some snapped necks and wings, or let their bird fly. A wife watched...

      Smickling I am as useless as a coronet, have lost a shoal of bloodied runts. Who shall assist me? Perhaps a ripe and red-faced peasant with more brats than she can raise. I need her shoes, I need a charm to stick what quickens to its cage. Perhaps...

      The Road to Chalvington at Dusk Cast out from Eden he journeyed along the roads of dog-rose in the cloaky overcoat of good tweed and lit a cigarette cupped against the wind so that his fingers glowed and took that first best draught of it and...

      Descent Into Hades In order to discover what took place, I eventually made a descent by slow ratcheting, hard and easy, caught at last by the moment despite warnings and my own considerations. Your face appears before me and your will, unbent at...

      Her Future Husband Appears to Her in the Shape of a Hawk after Victoria Brookland She never knows by which door he enters, but suddenly he is inside her. Her red underdress of hoops and holes stands stiff as a lightning pole. In her ribs, the...

      No Easy Answer Raymond Chandler’s having a drink in his LA apartment. Light borrowed from an Edward Hopper painting; near-harsh reading lamp beacons on his desk where a trilby makes a salute to half-eaten shadows. Sitting on a stiff-backed chair...