A couple times a day small curls appear in the water. I come sometimes to the river to see them. The best place, I’ve found, is an old trestle bridge. Now it’s been renovated, but I climb out to the pillar, and its high walls hide me from the train. It isn’t often. I don’t like nostalgia, and it is for this reason: If I let it, memory hides me too. I look down that cement pillar at the water turning in on itself. This is the tide finding an objection. It moves, and this is what calls me to s...

I never stared long enough when I was young through the wobbly wheels of the future swish swish but at times I saw the sidewalk rush, and felt the air whoosh past my handlebars. Spinning spokes flashed like rain in the sunshine. The raindrops beamed against my face and swish swish instead of fading, kept their lines all the way into silver bike tassels. The trees grew green, and in the winter, bare. Leaves fell brown through the streaking wheels swish swish vividly, like memories of rocketing...

All the clouds seem to rise from the gray deadened south cap. They aren’t a bird, but if they aren’t a bird, they are feathers, the winged clouds, a frozen counter-phoenix, blizzarding. The earth a face it crosses like an expression, glassed in its own helmet with O2. Reading it would be a mistake, like ascribing human motive to a cat’s stare. If it says anything we can understand, it says, food. It is salty, like blood but bitter. Nectar, and ambrosia, mostly gristle. Small globs of fat link...

Look there, up ahead, is that your ex-girlfriend? Weaving in the crowd a bob of blonde, I bet it is. I bet everything is congruence. There she is, and here you were, wondering what to do with your midnight. It’s crucial to approach this moment of fruition and delay an extra step. This is how she disappears from your prediction of success: One unstepped pace, a moment withheld or a sip kept in the cup of your sly belief. Let’s tuck that away there. What is it? It’s constitutional to you. It’s ...