Last year, two days after Christmas and around three that afternoon, I passed out in the foyer of my home in Montclair, New Jersey. I hadn’t even had a drink, and I considered that fact, lying there on the hardwood floor, staring up, coming...
Two pairs of shoes still in their boxes: a pair of clean new Hongmahwang loafers and a pair of gilded, tacky Italian slippers. The footwear of a madman caught last December hiding in a rat-filled hole almost within sight of one of his many...
Cursing, I slam down the receiver and run out of the house, shout for Bro. He stands by his car still parked on the street. Arms folded, he turns to me, a stocky young man with black hair and a heavy mustache. He wears a leather jacket and...
What redeems literary anthologists, if we’re able to claim neither the creativity of the poet nor the analytic rigor of the cultural theorist? Having dedicated myself for years to constructing elaborate critical arguments, how did I get...
The spartan interior of a U.S. Air Force C-130 has uncomfortable web seating. Our gear is strapped to a pallet in the aft section, where clamshell doors yawn open until we accelerate down the runway. This airplane is all business—bare...
The poems I have chosen to memorize over the years answer to an odd mixture of social occasions and opportunities. When asked to perform a poem at nonacademic parties, I have found Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” not among the poems Harold...
