Essays

The reality of Bolaño’s outlaw image, The Daily Beast gets into books, the Google books settlement’s collapse, Bill Murray’s support of poetry, and more.

Here is North Gulfport—
its liquor stores and car washes,

The house is in need of repair, but is—
for now, she says—still hers. After the storm,
she laid hands on what she could reclaim:

Somewhere in the post-Katrina wreckage and disarray of my grandmother’s house, there is a photograph of my brother Joe and me, our arms around each other’s shoulders. We are at a long-gone nightclub in Gulfport, the Terrace Lounge, standing...

On Saturday, when I come to see
my brother, they call him, over loudspeaker,
to the tower—a small guardroom

The first run, from Tampa to McAllen to Greensboro, was a bit of a lark. Maria was living in Tampa, and she was bored. So when a friend, someone she knew to be a Mexican drug cartel–affiliated smuggler, appeared at her door with a business...

The water clock makes into a measure
a flow so continuous none can say

I wanted to say I have come home
to bear witness, to read the sign
emblazoned on the church marquee—

We’re at the Potts Mountain Shooting Range
on a hot day in March, blowing ammo,

I should like Kennedy, there’s something about walking past a display lined with copies of True Compass that strikes a sour chord.