The Business of Hell If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell. I guess I will see them there soon. – CIA Counterintelligence Chief, James Jesus Angleton Being in the world is the business of hell. That’s the song they sing […]
The Detective The detective, he’s a father too, and when he plays with his girls in the park he remembers some dead girl’s hairdo, and the hill or ravine or tree reminds him of some old crime scene where a rape or attack got out of hand. The grit of dirt like sand, the lay of certain land, the shadow […]
From Frazer’s Golden Bough: In March 1895 a peasant named Michael Cleary, residing at Ballyvadlea, a remote and lonely district in the county of Tipperary, burned his wife Bridget Cleary alive over a slow fire on the kitchen hearth in the presence of and with the active assistance of some neighbours, including the woman’s own father and several of her […]
Missing Child The sound of them woke me in the morning, feet kicking up careful spirals of leaves and lean, low voices under my window. All the way to the woods there’s a line of them, a missing boy overnight their care won’t solve: the world is too small to search all of it. I find one to say about […]
Many thanks to the editors of the Cider Press Review, who just published my poem “Missing Child.” You can read it here.
