Shakespeare on Valentine's Day

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, -- yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go, --
My mistress when she walks, treads on the ground;
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Read and Explore Worlds

Lucifer in Starlight

Von's Bookshop, West Lafayette, Ind.

I drew these posters around 1996, while working at Von's Bookshop, one of the last and among the best independent book stores in America.

I worked at Von's while attending graduate school at Purdue University, managing the kids' books among other sections. Von's is a social focal-point of the community, a place where people browse shelves and talk books or current events -- the Sunday morning New York Times patrons, the skater punks, the retired professors, the undergrads, the high schoolers, the politicians, the drop-outs & eternal grad students, the factory workers, the farmers, the musicians, the school teachers, the writers, the readers, the kids. That job remains one of the lowest paying but most gratifying of my life.

Next time you visit West Lafayette, Ind., stop at Von's and say hi to Jim Martin and all the rest.

When the Levees Broke & the Moon Surrendered the Stars

Each morning, she watched me leave

my white chalk drawings on the blackboard
before the other students

shuffled in to first-hour English.

I drew the cloud cats

dancing with the rain fish.

I drew the blue 'coon
and the haunted playground.

I drew the doomed river's

dime-store soliloquy,

the wounded moon's final scene.

I drew the buzz-saw at Wilson's mill

screaming through pine logs.

I drew the sawdust piling up

faster than the shadow boy could sweep.

She folded the note
she left on my desk
into a paper crane.

You dress my memories in a shroud,

she said.
You perform the last offices of night.