Browse Topics
War
New Strategy
Instead of attacking one more foreign city, hammering it into rubble, / we adopt a new strategy and start bombing with money.
August 2016Opening Night
Because the widow of the arms manufacturer / loves to listen to concertos in the evening, / the city finally has an orchestra.
June 2016Memorial Day
Our dad will not walk in the parade wearing his uniform. He declines politely every year when he is asked. . . . He says uniforms are dangerous statements, if you think about it. He says uniforms can easily confer false authority, and encourage hollow bravado, and augment unfortunate inclinations, and exacerbate violent predilections. This is how he talks. He says uniforms are public pronouncements, like parades, and we should be careful about what we say in public.
June 2016Sunbeams
June 2016For 99 percent of the time we’ve been on Earth, we were hunters and gatherers, our lives dependent on knowing the fine, small details of our world. Deep inside, we still have a longing to be reconnected with the nature that shaped our imagination, our language, our song and dance, our sense of the divine.
The Uncircumcised
Three months after his aging daughter Rhonda gave him a one-year-old poodle-Lab-golden-retriever mix to keep as a pet, Felder came to believe that the dog — who looked at him mournfully whenever he went to the bathroom and waited for him by the door, as still as a statue, until he came out — was in fact none other than the reincarnation of his sister, Esther, may her name be a blessing.
October 2015
The Whole Inexplicable Business
A Tribute To Steve Kowit
Steve Kowit was a gifted poet and a compassionate human being. He was enthusiastic and outspoken, both on and off the page. . . . Kowit once said that he wanted to “move the reader with memorable tales that celebrate the whole inexplicable business — this strange, unspeakably marvelous life,” and that is exactly what he did.
July 2015
Hunger
My family, in particular, was in danger. We were the wrong religion (Presbyterian) for our neighborhood, and my father had a reputation as a Darwinist. To many of our neighbors, Christians and Muslims alike, his belief that humans had evolved from monkeys was blasphemy, and he was careful not to show his face in public.
October 2014
Freud, 1938, Vienna
Vienna, 1938, Freud, eighty-two. / Nazis and their allies parade in the streets, / flag after flag and those raised arms, / ceaseless enthusiasm and hatred of the Jews.
June 2014Selected Poems
— from “I Stand in the Doorway” | Sometimes when you say goodbye you know it’s goodbye for keeps. / You touch your lips to her cheek, or you squeeze his hand & walk off. / What else can you do?
October 2013excerpted from
The Cat Inside
I question the underlying assumption that one does a cat a favor by killing him . . . oh, sorry . . . I mean “putting him to sleep.” Turn to backward countries that don’t have Humane Societies for a simple alternative. In Tangier stray cats fend for themselves.
September 2013
