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“A Touch of Libya” or “A Bullet Snug Within Her Neck”
An “eyed” hawk moth (photo by Roy and Marie Battell, www.moorhen.me.uk): ‘…and what she thought / an owl’s eye… / …was more a day’s disguise or masquerade.’As the Houston Astrodome is filled with...
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“Like Thieves Who Frisk the Dead”
Painting by Ian Anderson (http://iansart.tumblr.com/): ‘He sees the blow / of body parts, the spray of blood, the ground / a whale spouting…’As violence erupts — and a grenade explodes — inside the...
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The Boston Bombings, Adam Gopnik, Kamal and the Muse
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, right, lost at the Golden Gloves championships in 2009. A year later, a new citizenship rule blocked him. From the New York Times, April 27, 2013.I wrote the novel Kamal while living...
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“A Rending of the Air”
‘…something falls / out of the sky just then – a muse’s pen, / a silver dart (it rather stabs than scrawls).’We continue our story. A massacre is taking place inside the Houston Astrodome. Kamal has...
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“A Hurricane of Thoughts and Comment”
Jim Bakker’s confession: ‘Or have I mixed my Jim with Jimmy? / They’re all the same. They make sweet noise / then falter with their altar boys.’Shot in the back, one of his ears blown off, Kamal looks...
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“War!”
President George Bush looks out the window of Air Force One over New Orleans, Wednesday, 31 August 2005, to survey the damage from Hurricane Katrina.We pick up now after a missile — a “mini-nuke” in...
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“O Hypnotizing Death!”
Woman with a Parrot, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1871)In the previous episode it’s revealed that Kamal is badly wounded. As he crawls away from an enormous bomb blast, apart from a bullet in his back,...
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“How Kamal Eats Dog Shit and Marvels at Written Music”
The Piano Lesson by Pierre-Auguste Renoir: ‘What foolishness to think /such beauty could be caught in nets of ink!’Kamal has taken refuge in the garden of a Houston suburban home. The owner of the...
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“The Man who had a Mid-Life Crisis at 26″
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1943), by Ivan Albright, oil on canvas.Having been picked up and loaded into a car by a very large man (and myrmecologist) named Carl — and thus saved from a cruel woman —...
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Tuesday Poem: The Final Episode of Kamal, Book One! “A Haunting, Sad Lacuna”
The Burning of the Library of Alexandria, by Hermann Goll (1876): ‘No doubt, in some unearthly realm, a vast / librarium of titles have amassed, / an anti-Alexandria to match / the one which Caesar had...
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