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Susan Davis

Author

Orange

1. Death is the opposite sex. Listen to it. Bells have been rung in the tower for years, a clangor meant to stun the angel I slept by. I wanted to believe it was a casual gesture to fling my leg so easily over its waist. 2. The angel wa [...]

Mockingbird

Heaven fills its choirs death by death. Our rim of dawn is their upturned bowl filled with the hunger of birds. Lifted, the fingertips match left to right, a hinge from which the palms fold down, to imprison song—as if it really were a bird, [...]

An Alliance Gone Awry

What Went Wrong: The Creation and Collapse of the Black-Jewish Alliance. By Murray Friedman, with the assistance of Peter Binzen. Free Press. $24.95. There is little argument that since the founding of the National Association of Colored People in 1 [...]

Halo is Hung Around Them

Halo is there to protect them—the saints— whose names were nailed onto the world like so many coat hooks. In the first grade coat room, I threw my coat on the floor. A tangerine in my hand, my books balanced on my head, I walked backwards [...]