The poet gives a young woman $15 for admission, squeezes her drink ticket like a talisman. Voices roar like surf. The poet straightens her arms so she can shimmy through the crowd. She must reach the color-coded name tags. There’s a palette of categories: Tech, Finance, Start-up, Health. She must decide between Arts, yellow, or…

On Holy Saturday, I woke up at my sister’s house in northern Minnesota with a visual migraine, an aura with no consequent pain. They happen occasionally, and mine are always pretty textbook: wavy sparkling spirals and shimmering crystalline lamellae. The aura is technically termed a scintillating scotoma, a result of a sudden tidal wave of…

The summer before you died, I hid on the roof in Tollygunge. I walked part of the way home from Sudder Street and by the time I got to the apartment building where I was staying, the sooty red sunset had spent itself. Dusk sifted in the quarter’s dim air, and from the park by…

For the third time this week I’ve encountered someone who wants to talk about music. And I’m delighted. I love to talk about music. He’s just found out that I write about music for one of my paychecks, and he’s eager to engage in a spirited conversation. “So,” he says, “do you think there’s ever…