ALT Recommendation BY KEITH LEONARD To whom it may concern, I recommend this student without reservation. I’ve taught him in three courses. I know him the way one knows a small seaside town after window shopping its main street. I’ve seen him cry once. He handed in a paper on utopias despite his parents’ protracted divorce. When I read a perfect transcript, the string of As also sound like a scream. I often think of the scene in Alice in Wonderland where the servants paint white roses red because the queen had ordered red roses for the garden.

ALT More Frank by Keith Leonard When Elaine de Kooning painted Frank O'Hara, she painted his face then smudged it away. "It was more Frank," she said. I've been thinking, too, of Rilke saying he just wanted to be a final thing. The line between art and laundry erased. I like to run the dishwasher at night then place all the clean, clear glasses in a neat row each morning. I put my yellow coffee cup in the empty rack. I drive to work and grade my papers and peer over the cliff edge of our bank account, muttering, "No stairs." In a myth, Plato lets the dead choose what life they will lead when next reborn. It's taking Odysseus a long time. Of course it is. He's looking for an uneventful life. He's finding so few to choose from. This one pressing a bag of ice to a child's forehead. This one drawing a comb through his daughter's tangled hair. from the journal The Gettysburg Review