—addressing Eliza Winston, Mississippi slave escaped to freedom in Minnesota, 1860
There you were, Eliza,
gold from God in plain sight
No one had picked you up
wiped the muck from the landscape of your face.
Gold, I tell you, left for me to find,
to polish. I won’t say to own—
we’ve had enough of that.
A new collection of Doyle’s nonfiction overflows with wonder.
Class criticism is a common theme in movies. This one says something more unusual.
A white woman, her black husband, and the struggle to be known
Matt and Adam recap the Oscars, celebrate Parasite, and discuss the year in movies.
When time evaporates with our last breath,
the air we breathed a chloroformed mask
drugging us from seeing beyond shadows,
we will lose our wrinkled
frowns, our drooping
nods, our forced smiles
and stones will turn into clouds, the wind
will become a cocoon of blue zephyr,
and oceans tufted feathers.
We will rise
the way tapers flame after a kiss
from the Paschal candle.
Hope smells like barbecue.
Let the holy man shear the sheep.
Trust the blade. It conjures sleep,
and drugs the ewe upon her knees,
whets the rite of intimacy.
She lets him cut away her robe.
In each bronze eye revolves a globe.
The shutter flash collides with light.
The farm is trussed in mist tonight.
(Peter, on the mountain)
Not the light but how it spoke, his transfigured
flesh an instrument of consonance and discord.
As if that were not enough, Elijah? Moses, too?
James grabbed his knife. John stood mute, dis-
figured by fear. And I? Well, some people act. Some
wait, and then there are those who think out loud.
Let’s build three sheds! I shouted, instantly
regretting it. What I meant was hold still, but my words
never come out right. When light stopped throbbing,