Author Archive: Paul Epps

Funeral: For Us His Gold

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after Gerald Stern The insect was yellow with crumpled-black banded legs         and shellacked back that would outlast us         and wistful eyes from what I could discern on that trail                 between fields, and we laid him out in the open air under a sky fast-blue with                 change, wedging         a leaf beneath his triple-belted belly so he didn’t rest on                 plain dirt,         and we placed two cloverblooms by his head and he was old you said, could tell by how definite the stripes were, how                 complete         the patterns bold and dark, almost engraved, and he was beautiful in that pasture… Read more →

Fernando and Barbara Ann

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I got an email today from a guy named Fernando and I can’t get the song out of my mind . . . Can you hear the drums, Fernando? There was something in the air that night The stars were bright, Fernando. I would not want to have a name that reminds people of a song that they immediately start singing to me my whole life. Like Jude. Or Barbara Ann. Barbara Ann would be a bad name to have . . . Read more →

West Coast Tsunami Warning

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Those of us who live on the west coast, including Alaska and Hawaii, got a tsunami warning yesterday morning, following a 7.9 earthquake in Alaska. My first thought was “This is going to make me look like a genius for not getting my car washed last weekend.” Read more →

Something Terrible Would Happen

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It sounds a little bit strange but the idea that something terrible would happen . . . I feel something here . . . Something over here . . . It’s like a pressure . . . on my heart. It’s pushing, it’s like it’s pushing. And it hurts. Something is pushing there, it hurts. Sadness, there’s a lot of sadness. I don’t want to feel it. Something is pushing there, it hurts, there is sadness, and there is something that doesn’t want to feel it. I don’t want to feel it . . . Read more →

Ghosts

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You must not think that what I have accomplished through you could have been accomplished by any other means. Each of us is to himself indelible. I had to become that which could not be, by time, from human memory, erased. I had to burn my hungry, unappeasable furious spirit so inconsolably into you you would without cease write to bring me rest. Bring us rest. Guilt is fecund. I knew nothing I made myself had enough steel in it to survive. I tried: I made beautiful paintings, beautiful poems. Fluff. Garbage. The inextricability of love and hate? If I had merely made you love me you could not have saved me. — Frank Bidart, “The Ghost”   By Robert Lowell: Read more →

Names

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You call me a Christian, to make me angry and to make yourself feel happy. Others call themselves Christians, to make themselves feel other emotions. Very well, if we are dealing in exciting words, I will call you a devil-worshipper. That should give you an agitation which will please you for some time. — Zabardast Khan Read more →

The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. — Nietzsche

This is My Year!

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My dad is 82 . . . he says he always thought that someday he would get everything organized and under control but it never happened. That being said, I feel like this is the year I get everything organized and under control . . . Read more →

When Death Is Not Death

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A certain man was believed to have died, and was being prepared for burial, when he revived. He sat up, but he was so shocked by the scene surrounding him that he fainted. He was put in a coffin, and the funeral party set off for the cemetery. Just as they arrived at the grave, he regained consciousness, lifted the coffin lid, and cried out for help. “It is not possible that he has revived,” said the mourners, “because he has been certified dead by competent experts.” “But I am alive!” shouted the man. He appealed to a well-known impartial scientist and jurisprudent who was present. “Just a moment,” said the expert. He then turned to the mourners, counting them. “Now we have heard what the alleged deceased has had to say. You fifty witnesses tell me what you regard as the truth.” “He is dead,” said the witnesses. “Bury… Read more →

When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men. — Epitaph of Jalaludin Rumi

What Shall I Be?

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I have again and again grown like grass; I have experienced seven hundred and seventy moulds. I died from minerality and became vegetable; And from vegetativeness I died and became animal. I died from animality and became man. Then why fear disappearance through death? Next time I shall die Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels: After that soaring higher than angels — What you cannot imagine. I shall be that. — Jalaladin Rumi Read more →

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