"... just tell me the history you want.."

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James recommends these on line literary sites.

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Contact
Mr. Cervantes

The Memory Priest

Just begin with yourself,
tell me your sins, your debts,
the unsettled differences
between you
and your neighbors, lovers, or kin.
There is no need for you to remember,
to write down or record
anything in any way, just tell me
the history you want. I will ask
the same of your neighbors,
lovers, and kin,
who may also begin
with any place or time, for I
am the only one born to this.
No other version will exist;
history begins today.
Shame and failure . . . well
you did not tell me of them.
The perfect arc
of your story begins now.
I hold it suspended
and will not write or record
it any other way.
Think of your lover's arc,
how it will hang and spark
where it crosses yours.
Ask me, and I will tell
it that way until I die;
no other version
survives me.





Empty Chairs

I thought I saw someone sitting there who should not
have been even a thousand miles from here, like a mailbox
holding a letter I had not mailed, and next to him
she fidgeted, the weightless woman whose name was Nora,
eliciting northern things like snow and a rush of wind.
Next to her and closer to me (as we favored the circle)
was the empty chair momentarily occupied by
a purse, much like the chair to the left of me, where a glass
sat sweating, expanding its ring of condensation. In fact,
I was alone, in a setting I'd not disturbed for years,
with a purse I'd left uninspected and which hopefully
did not contain a set of keys. Some names I can't remember,
which is why this or that chair belongs to so-and-so.
I could never lift or scrape them to their proper places,
for there is warmth and that peculiar scent of hair
hanging like a cloud, waiting for the breath of speech.