{"product_id":"arias-isbn-9781524711603","title":"Arias","description":"\u003cb\u003eFollowing her recent \u003ci\u003eOdes, \u003c\/i\u003ethe Pulitzer Prize-winning poet gives us radical new poems of intimate life and political conscience, of race and class and a mother's violence.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe atom bomb,\u003ci\u003e Breaking Bad,\u003c\/i\u003e Rasputin, the cervix, her mother's return from the dead: the peerless Sharon Olds once again takes up subject matter that is both difficult and ordinary, elusive and everywhere. Each aria is shaped by its unique harmonics and moral logic, as Olds stands center stage to sing of sexual pleasure and chance wisdom, and faces the tragic life of our nation and our planet. \"I cannot say I did not ask \/ to be born,\" begins one aria, which considers how, with what actions, with what thirst, we each ask for a turn, and receive our portion on earth. Olds delivers these pieces with all the passion, anguish, and solo force that make a great performance, in the process enlarging the soul of her reader.“Olds has the goods in this eclectic collection of new verse . . . With its expansive range and warm honesty, this book shows us why the Pulitzer Prize winner is still among the most beloved poets alive.” —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBuzzFeed\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003eArias\u003c\/i\u003e is rich with its own music . . . Olds offers gripping, vivid songs that urgently capture the preciousness of what there remains on Earth to defend, and all that has been lost . . . In [these] complex, nourishing poems, the stakes are clear: if we are on Earth, we ought to be singing.” —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“[Olds] bring[s] the immensity of the world’s hurt to an intimate human level, not to simplify it but to both concentrate it and to find its odd joys. \u003ci\u003eArias \u003c\/i\u003eoffers hard-earned comfort well worth the effort.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “In \u003ci\u003eArias,\u003c\/i\u003e Olds puts her honest, clear verse to work mostly outside of the body, and looks instead at the body politic, at the social body we have created or destroyed together.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eNew York Journal of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eSHARON OLDS was born in San Francisco and educated at Stanford University and Columbia University. The winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and England's T. S. Eliot Prize for her 2012 collection, \u003ci\u003eStag's Leap,\u003c\/i\u003e she is the author of eleven previous books of poetry and the winner of many other awards and honors, including the inaugural San Francisco Poetry Center Award for her first book, \u003ci\u003eSatan Says\u003c\/i\u003e (1980), and the National Book Critics Circle Award for her second, \u003ci\u003eThe Dead and the Living,\u003c\/i\u003e which was also the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1983. \u003ci\u003eThe Father \u003c\/i\u003ewas short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize, and \u003ci\u003eThe Unswept Room\u003c\/i\u003e was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Olds teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University and helped to found the NYU outreach programs, among them the writing workshop for residents of Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island and for the veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. She lives in New York City.Meeting a Stranger\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor You\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the morning, when I’m pouring the hot milk\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003einto the coffee, I put the side of my\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eface near the convex pitcher, to watch\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe last, round drop from the spout—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand it feels like being cheek to cheek\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewith a baby. Sometimes the orb pops back up,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ea ball of cream balanced on a whale’s\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewatery exhale. Then I gather the tools \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eof my craft, the cherry sounding-board tray \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003efor my lap, like the writing-arm of a desk, \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe phone, the bird book for looking up\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe purple martin. I repeat them as I seek them,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eso as not to forget: tray, cell phone,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003epurple martin; tray, phone,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003emartin, Trayvon Martin, song was\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003einvented for you, all art was made\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003efor you, painting, writing, was yours,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eour youngest, our most precious, to remind us\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto shield you—all was yours, all that is\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eleft on earth, with your body, was for you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLooking South at Lower Manhattan, Where the Towers Had Been\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf we see harm approaching someone—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eif you see me starting to talk about\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esomething I know nothing about,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elike the death of someone who’s a stranger to me,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003estep between me and language. This morning,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI am seeing it more clearly, that song\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ecan be harmful, in its ignorance\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewhich does not know itself as ignorance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI have crossed the line, as the line was crossed\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewith me. I need to apologize\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto the letters of the alphabet,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto the elements of the periodic\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003etable, to O, and C, and H,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eoxygen, carbon, hydrogen,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewhich make up most of a human body—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebody which breaks down, in fire,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto the elements it was composed of, and all that is\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eleft is ashes, sacred ashes\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eof strangers, carbon and nitrogen,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand the rest departs as carbon dioxide and is\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebreathed in, by those nearby,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe living who knew us and the living who did not\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eknow us. I apologize\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto nitrogen, to calcium with the\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003epretty box-shape of its crystal structure,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI apologize to phosphorus,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand potassium, that raw bright metal\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewe contain, and to sodium and sulfur, and to\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe trace amounts which are in us somewhere like the\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003estars in the night—copper, zinc,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ecobalt, iron, arsenic, lead,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI am singing, I am singing against myself, as if\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003erushing toward someone my song might be approaching,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto shield them from it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMeeting a Stranger\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I meet you, it’s not just the two of us meeting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYour mother is there, and your father is there,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand my mother and father. And our people—back from our\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003efolks, back—are there, and what they\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003emight have had to do with each other;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eif one of yours, and one of mine\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehad met, what might have happened is there\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ein the room with us. They are shadowy,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ecompared to us, they are quivers of reflected\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elight on a wall. And if I were\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ea German, and you a Jew, or I a\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJew and you a Palestinian,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eor, as this morning, when you are an African\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAmerican woman, and I am a WASP,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eone of your family might have been taken\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003efrom their home, and brought through murder to murder\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eby one of my family. It is there in the air\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewith us. And if you’re a woman in the city\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewhere you live, and I am staying at\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe hotel where you work, and if you have brought me\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003emy breakfast on a tray—though you and I have not\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003emet, before, we are breathing in\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eour lineages, together. And whether\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethere is guilt in the room, or not, or blame,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethere is the history of human evil,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand the shame, in me, that someone I could be\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003erelated to, could have committed,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eagainst someone you are related to, some\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehorror. And in the room, there is\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ea question, alive—would I have risked harm\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto try to protect you, as I hope I would risk it\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003efor a cousin, a niece, or would I have stood\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003easide, in the ordinary cowardice and self-\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003einterest of my flesh now sharing your breath,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eyour flesh my breath.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo Makeup\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMaybe one reason I do not wear makeup is to scare people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf they’re close enough, they can see something is different with me,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esomething unnerving, as if I have no features,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI am embryonic, pre-eyebrows, pre-eyelids, pre-mouth,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI am like a water bear talking to them,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eor an amniotic traveler,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ea vitreous floater on their own eyeball,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehuman ectoplasm risen on its hind legs to discourse with them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd such a white white girl, such a sickly toadstool,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eso pale, a visage of fog, a phiz of\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003emist above a graveyard, no magenta roses,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eno floral tribute, no goddess, no grown-up\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewoman, no acknowledgment\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eof the drama of secondary sexual characteristics, just the\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003egray matter of spirit talking,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe thin features of a gray girl in a gray graveyard—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003egranite, ash, chalk, dust.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI tried the paint, but I could feel it on my skin, I could\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehardly move, under the mask of my\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003edesire to be seen as attractive in the female\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eway of 1957,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand I could not speak. And when the makeup came off I felt\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eactual as a small mammal in the woods\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewith a speaking countenance—or a basic\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eprimate, having all the expressions\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewhich evolved in us, to communicate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf my teenage acne had left scars,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eif my skin were rough, instead of soft,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI probably couldn’t afford to hate makeup,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eor to fear so much the beauty salon or the\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003every idea of beautyship.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd my mother was beautiful—did I say this?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn my small eyes, and my smooth withered skin,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eyou can see my heart, you can read my naked lips.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA Pair of Sonnets Against the Corporal Chastisement of Children\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBlows That Fall on a Child\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBlows don’t fall. Feathers fall,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand are dropped from towers. Leaves fall.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDictionaries fall from towers—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe speed of their fall accelerates,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand the rate of the acceleration\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eaccelerates. What falls is something\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elet go of, something gravity\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eis hauling to it, to tiramisu it—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003edessert that says pull me to you. The liver\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand lights of the body that the blow strikes are not\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003emagnets, the blow is neither drawn\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto its objects nor floated down from its source—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ea blow is driven, by an engine, it is\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe expression of a heart.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Progeny of Punishment\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey inherit the earth. They crawl on it,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethey pull themselves up, they walk, they look up,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethey do not know which visage they will see\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eabove them—the crescent, or the waxing gibbous,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eseas and craters of the eyes nose mouth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSometimes the cycle has a pattern, sometimes\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe new is followed in an instant by the full,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eas if a face turned suddenly toward you,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand in its holes and shadows you could read\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe next hour of your life. With the impact of a\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003egiant bolide, the moon was born,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003estruck right off the earth. The children\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eborn as the corporeal subjects of their makers\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eare our species’ living daylights, being beaten out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e(b. 1972, d. 1979)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePoem to Etan Patz\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen the butter we put on our white bread was colored with butter yellow, a cancerous dye, and all the fourth graders were taken by streetcar to the Dunky Company to see milk processed. . . . Before we were herded back to the streetcar line, we were each given a half pint of milk in tiny milk bottles with straws to suck it up. In this way we gradually learned about our country.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e—Ruth Stone, “American Milk”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis morning, on the front page, in a headline,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe A and the Z of your name. I was walking up the\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esidewalk my son had walked up, that morning,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto the bus to school. I beg your forgiveness\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003efor speaking to you now whom I had not known—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eonly my son, your age then, known.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd this morning there is an arrest, a confession,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003enow we have some words of a story,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elured, promise, bag, out in the\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eopen with trash. He says you were\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ea block away from your building—not you,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebut what you had been ravaged from.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut how could he have seen you, and wanted\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto stop you, to tear you out of the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e33 years ago—a\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elong life set next to yours.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYour mother, your father—forgive me, I do not\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eknow them—may have walked past your folded\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eform. Young darling, nothing in your nature\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehad anything to do with anything you saw\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethat day, or learned. But who could want that,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003efor a baby to have to know, with his life, who we\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eare at our worst, with his last eyes—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eyour smile printed, then, on every\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ecarton of what makes the bones long,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eevery child at breakfast gazing\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003einto the red mirror. In this way\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewe gradually learn about our country.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePoem Which Talks Back to Me\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe parents whose boy went off to school\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethat morning—the police may have found someone\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewho saw their son, alive, after\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethey saw him for the last time. Step away!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSomeone who saw that elfin face\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003echange, at the word “soda.” Step back!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd change again, and change. And down\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe basement steps, down into the earth,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe stairs down into the underworld.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDon’t go there. Close your eyes. Someone\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003emay know the unbearable—someone\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ein custody. O, “custody.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA wall of dirt, a wall of stone,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ea bare bulb, like the uterus upside\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003edown. No Kaddish, no washing of the dead,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eno linen shroud, no company\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethrough the long night.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhatever honor can be kept for him—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehis pure and whole honor is kept\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eby his parents, for the rest of the hard\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elabor of their lives. All this time,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethey could not die, so they’d be here, in case\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehe came back. Unspeakable. And now,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe one taken in for questioning cries out,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I don’t know why, I don’t know why.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe will not tell. He is holding that hour\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto himself. Did he hold that child in his hands. And\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003evanish him, the spirit mattered away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd the dear matter—don’t. The truck,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe landfill, or the barge, the burial\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eat sea—the dispersal, the containment within\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe bounds of the oceans, crested on top and\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ecragged at the floor where the mantle of the planet pours\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eup, molten, through fissures—contained\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ein the air bound by the atmosphere, the\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eclouds of mourning pressing against\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe inner surface of the casing. Shut\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eyour mouth. Put down your pen. Drop\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eyour weapon! Stop! In the name of the law\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand the prophets. At his birth, the history of the earth began.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBirds in Alcoves\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMore and more, along the shore\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eof the Northeast Corridor,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewhere the trains run along the edge of the land,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebirds are standing in alcoves like telephone booths\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eas the humans go by—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003edoorless ceilingless closets in walls of reed\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewhose floors are the banks, awash in water,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eof inlets and bays.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLarge wading birds step back into green recesses,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand stand very still,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esometimes more than one in the narrow space,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esometimes a blue heron and a great egret facing each other\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebeak to beak. Some birds do not stand,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebut grip a branch with their feet to stay upright.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSome birds hop, bouncing along\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elike little pocketless kangaroos,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand a crow walks along with coins singing in her trousers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut many birds\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003efreeze when they see us,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elike a horror movie—a scene in a house\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewhere a killer has a special room.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHerons, egrets, ibises, bitterns,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003estorks, cranes, coots, rails\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003efall silent, struck motionless at our advent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSome sidestep, for safekeeping, into extinction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e8 Moons\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn atom bomb—does it reduce everything\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto atoms—to a mist the size of the moon?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd the hydrogen bomb—is there water in it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen you drop it, does the mushroom above it\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elook like a splash, as if you’d dropped\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe moon onto the ocean? If you dropped\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe moon onto the Pacific, would its\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ediameter fit? Eight moons\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003edropped onto the Pacific would fit on it. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe can’t imagine the length of time\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eit took to make the universe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd the death of the earth—for most of us,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eunimaginable, and therefore\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003einevitable. As if each parent,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eat the same moment, will see our offspring\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eatomized, our species’ clouds\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elifting off the globe, the huge, childless atom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy Father’s Whiteness\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt takes me a lifetime to see my father\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eas a white man—to see his whiteness\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e(named by white men after gleaming and brightness).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI saw the muck sweat of his pallor, he’d be\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003efaceup on the couch like a mushroom in a mushroom-forcer,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand I didn’t even wonder what it would feel like\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003efor a person to be proud of their father.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI knew that at the interfraternity council \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehe’d been the handsome, wisecracking one, the\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003epresident, proud he could not read,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehe could always get someone to do that for him—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehe liked to say the two people allowed\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto graduate from his college without knowing how to\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eread or write were him and Herbert Hoover.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNor did any frat house there\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehouse a brother.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNor did I see my father—that in order to pass\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eout every night on the couch, snore\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand snort and gargle-sing from his chintz\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esty, he had to overcome\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eevery privilege known to a man\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003etall, dark, handsome, white,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003estraight, middle class. He had to put his\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eevery advantage down on the street and drive\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eover it with that thump a tire\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand a body make. O say can you see him as I\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esee him now, as if he had no one\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto answer to, he so prepared\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto devour and excrete the hopes he’d been handed\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eon a platter, the spoon in his mouth, he could eat\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewhat he had not earned, he could do it in his sleep.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eState Evidence\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen the men in maximum security\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewere saying what they’d done, I thought of him,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe one who had not had a name\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003euntil they found our seventh-grade classmate’s\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebody half buried near his brother’s cabin\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ein the hills, fifty years ago, and for a\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003emoment I thought that he had cheated, by paying\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eup front, not doing his time—the forty\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethousand volts had sprung him from his twenty-four\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehours a day, his four hundred thirty-eight\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethousand hours. I do not know\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehow much it cost the state to fry him,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto light up a man like a city, a species, but it\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eprobably wasn’t as much as three\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehots for fifty years, so his murder may have\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esaved us a lot, and it saved him a hell of a\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elot of time. But his execution—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewasn’t it state evidence that it’s\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eO.K. to kill someone? What did she\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehave to protect herself with, against such\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eevidence? One pink\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eplastic barrette—hold the lamb,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eor rabbit, in your fist, and sink\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eits shank in his throat.","brand":"Knopf","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301952278757,"sku":"NP9781524711603","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781524711603.jpg?v=1767721761","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/arias-isbn-9781524711603","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}