Cincinnati Review

I accept the position in spring. When they call, they tell me I was the unanimous vote. It was you or no one, the department chair says. And no one didn’t want the position, she adds, and laughs. Okay, I say, then sign the papers, graduate with my doctorate, move across the country. Okay, I …

I. It could be snow, the way it floats, or ash from ancient volcanoes awake and exploding. But instead it’s seeds wrapped in something like down, released by the thousands from cottonwood trees. If they land near water they grow but mostly they don’t. The sun starts to set and the air turns the color …

. . . Pete Best was going to be a teacher before Paul McCartney persuaded him to join the band’s Hamburg tour. There they played four shows a day, seven nights a week. Between sets they slept next to the toilets behind the cinema screen of the Bambi Kino theater. When the Beatles returned to …

Groping for underwear in my top drawer my fingers brush the velvet bag I shoved far in the back, not knowing where to store spent casings from the guns that fired above my mother’s casket. That was a month ago. Today—deep breath—I spill them in my hand, these hollow fossils from that blast of woe …