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| Ann Wood Fuller |
June 2001 |
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The Last Resort How easily the Caymen sky opened up its dawn, conch-pink, and we, already having had our first drink out on our lanai, the heat-crowned palms fanned-out, the sun-beaten bougainvillea, a height just right for us to go about without our clothes- - - and you, already bored with the shells, the native straw, the shops of GeorgeTown dropped, like the breadfruit drops, into a chair and closed yourself so quickly with your robe against the leeward wind, which must be while we were inside we never felt the heat on our sunburned skin through all those stick nights when even the furniture would sweat and you kept walking the sandy floor to spite the bed, but somehow through it all I didn't mind the wind or, for that matter, the sand--- how easily it filled a wound, one grain at a time |
Thanksgiving Leave the sunset to its pink temper; the air, like the smell of medicine in a closed room. Come, rest your chin on the dormer sill in this house, this mortgaged ground and watch the sunset close this place, a capsule of pale view, where groves of oranges rot, and somber groups of heron graze near the bay. The sunset sways the boulevard: the palms ring their manes over the Linclon, white as a collar, parked in the drive. The table is prepared, the yawning Lalique, stuffed with beautiful ice cubes, the water clear enough to breathe. A thicket of chairs is pulled away from the asthmatic crevices of the room, and soon we will sit and eat the flesh of animals smoked in fruits and herbs and chatter on about our changing lives, the stubborn heart unchanged. |
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House For Sale suffer these ruins of what never was. Richard Howard This house once served it hosts like guests, giving its best room, its two good chairs cheerfully. The walls gave back a rich response from the cedar growing once and held in the warmth, held up the roof. Aloof in its wooden trim, this house breathed in the gulf's salt-air for years. It listened to each bird-complaint in the eaves. Now behind each window-dark face, this house waits like a body waits, wanting to be claimed. Oh, I feel old, held here in these childless rooms. How well each post slips into its beam, the floors broomstung, the tongue obedient in its groove. Outside, the night grows grey. A young scrub oak knocks against the clapboard like a hand. |