Night Flowers By Zofia Barisas The garden lies in deep darkness even in the noon of blazing day. A steamy pond lies still in wait for uncertain footsteps. Here aquatic green spiders, big as frogs, spin iridescent webs from leaf to leaf. Gigantic, ancient trees stand…

It is dead, for a time. Sometimes we are all dead for a time. Our lives leave off, sleep under the weight of snow.

It was the losers’ bar in my neighborhood.

She sat down in the big soft chair in front of his desk. “In your religion you believe in past lives, right?” “Yes, reincarnation is a tenet of the Hindu faith.” He replied. “As Catholics, I think we believe that only Jesus had the power to come

Far away or up close, she appeared just like anyone else, a young woman with pale arms and legs and a milk-face unblemished by a single freckle or pimple or blotch. Only when she turned a certain way did it become clear that what rested atop her muscle an

I know I used to say I’d rather walk on the moon with my own rapacity. And you can easily say things like that, given the luxuriance of youth. But it was a lie, if you want to know the truth. That is only so much hot balloon air, puffed up in the chest,

The Third Defenestration happened during the Soviet era, by the apparatchiks. The only thing that saved the people from certain death after being thrown out of the window of the Prague Castle, was an enormous pile of horse shit below, or haufen mist, as t

I planned to wear this shirt, / blue, black, and white stripes, / collar and pocket,

And I admire// the orchestrations of ants and honeybees/ and the persistence and adaptations/ of the cockroach.

Lisa Pottratz's mother illustrated fashion for Lord & Taylor from home in the 1970s. There is more to say about fertility, naming, and diabetes.

Pascal would let something slip now and then. He was sharp and spoke excellent English, with a beautiful Spanish accent. He corrected speech among the guys, but he exercised his lessons in grammar with an eloquence that fascinated all of us, not letting a

familiar people passing closely faces we recognize but cannot place

Saturday at Portobello market. Wind whittles leaves from the trees; casts shop signs into windows, turning glass to shimmering fishscale.

Don't slow down, he said, time grows shorter every minute. So you pretended to stay young or cheated on your marriage or forgot to watch your children growing up, and still never found someone who could understand you.

A Walk Among Pigeons I know these pigeons. They were beggars in another life. I may have been among them once, but then I fell in love, and when that ended, my spirit floated free. And I became, though somewhat battered and b