More than halfway through, I’m not quite sure how I feel about George Schuyler’s satirical novel, Black No More. It’s certainly not without humor, and not without a large measure of truth. In the clever guise of science fiction, it is, in effect, a witty, sharply drawn editorial cartoon on American race relations. That I find the bitter edge of its caricature unappealing, says as much about me as it […]
This bright frosty morning, the world smells like a million lonely breakfasts. “November Postcard” Songs and Letters, November 15, 2008 . The Blacker the Berry You’re too dark. You’re too light. You’re the wrong shade of brown. So it goes, from Boise to Los Angeles, from Los Angeles to Harlem, in the sad story of the very black Emma Lou Morgan, as plainly, painfully, and artfully told by Wallace Thurman. […]
It’s good to need a coat again. It’s good to have a coat, and a faithful wool cap to lift from off its summer pedestal of old books by the door. It’s good to walk in the clear frosty air. It’s good to be out with the young moon, and Mars, and Saturn, and Jupiter. It’s good to hear the sound of geese honking overhead, and in the nearby wetland. […]
Many years ago, in our old hometown, there was a Japanese man in his nineties who had smoked cigarettes all of his adult life and loved smoking them still, all with no apparent harm to his health. There are people like that, people who can live on terrible, unhealthy diets, or who can consume alcohol in amounts that would make others ill, and yet thrive. As the story goes, with […]
Yesterday afternoon, the deep wet grass in front of the house was so green it made the sun smile — a wonderful thing, considering what the sun sometimes has to look down upon, even if it is not a person, and is, as many adults believe, just a star. October 18, 2020 . Child With a Lantern in a Dream Now you can see, Mr. Sun, that there is nothing […]
When a bee dies for the last fall flower, a poet makes his flight home. (and the other way around) . [ 881 ]
A little boy and a sparrow grave . . . the day he put his gun away . . . . [ 880 ]
The end of the world is a strange and beautiful place. It keeps growing, and it keeps ending. And as it ends, it gives birth to countless new beginnings. Eyes open, eyes close, eyes open again. Galaxies and atoms. Oceans and tufts of grass. A little boy’s pockets turned inside out for the wash. What he remembers. What he loses. What he collects. Where have you been? his kind mother […]
The poet who worries about not being read forgets one thing: his face accompanies him everywhere. moonlight on the vine and the sweet grapes left behind by that old raccoon . Old Grandpa Moon The whole great countryside was asleep. The night was clear and cold, and the stars were winking above the farmhouses and fields. But inside an old stone cottage, there was one little boy who could not […]
A bumblebee asleep on a flower dreams of the last time he danced. August 9, 2020 Bouquet Dahlia buds every which way all pointing homeward and then you say here my love Recently Banned Literature, September 26, 2016 [ 833 ]
