Marylin Butler

It is midnight when we open the tent. The babysitter (herself so young in her sleep), the small boy next to her. Never was time so still. For a while I do not move. Innocence, the horizon of this life, is silent. Whatever its meaning birth is aching [...]

There was my father's canary in our house, in a cage, in the kitchen hanging on the wall. And our cat, always on the checkered tiles below it. Why the cat lived in the house was a mystery to me. The death of a bird meant the death of a man to my fat [...]