for my lover
deems you lackluster:
your wing, a dimpled yawn
that ebony beak—stock!
your horns? simply tedious.
he would rage against
your familiar spine.
who can blame him?
a man does not know.
dragon-bird, shy, knife-
feathered anomaly:
do not be ashamed
of your supple crown—
sky-high perch
barely recalled. do not
hide those fingertip-branded
fish-fin ears. there is
wonder in your
weathered waist,
eons of deciduous leaves.
snake-cloud you are
half-named
some mythic beast
every girl dreams.

I.

In 1971, Don DeLillo published his first novel, Americana, within which a novelist, not the main character, fantasizes about his future life. He lives alone, in a remote place, venerated by the younger generation, sporadically visited by young admirers. I don’t know how many of DeLillo’s young admirers he actually receives in person, but thirty-six years after Americana, his influence on succeeding generations of American novelists has become and remains tremendous. He holds particular appeal for a certain subset of college-aged males[1] who discover in his books a …

yes, when I was young the world was flat, flat as a board. you could push a wheelbarrow across it all the way and you’d never be troubled by the slightest hill. would never get a rest on a downslope either. no, it was flat and flat. you could walk all the way across it if you wanted to. of course you didn’t. it was dangerous, there, at the edges of the world.
the flatness got into your bones. we were a flat kind of people back then. our doors were …