Author Archives: Salamander Intern

  South Natick, Massachusetts   Before they could scrape, prime, caulk, patch the divots and deep cracks and repair the ubiquitous rot, three men in t-shirts and torn jeans covered with sheets of plastic the 1829 Holbrook bell and Adam’s … Read More

  After Li Bai, For Shujen Wang   5. A Song   When she glides around the garden her light dress lifts like a cloud and her face, because the mind makes it so, appears to be a rose. And … Read More

  You find yourself making a list of goods late at night, when the kids have fallen asleep and your wife is making tomorrow’s lunches. When no one is home, you scan for what you will need, you steal items … Read More

  I’m told he sees his own reflection in the glass as a competitor, a bird he must face down— I’m not so sure. This morning, there’s the sound again—despite a sleep-soaked overcast, the house still dark inside. Thwap!—a blast … Read More

  let’s go to my house you say, let’s go to Mom’s house, the floorboards will creak in places you don’t remember—guaranteed. And you will smell fruit where there was absence, see couples in photographs instead of baby pictures. You … Read More

  In this habit of rotting the root fails to make do.   Wide blueblack straits spied from the shore recall this darling aporia of mine.   I’m to be given thus a crozier, I’ll wander to meet an elder … Read More

  Heavier than age Morning has us By the throat. Why do you birds rise so early? Birds have tiny tongues A bird is a bell. Dark people in white clothing Creep around town. Heaven, heaven, pour into their ears … Read More

  Fishermen went out to sea Fisherwomen ran after them A boy is standing in the doorway With a toy ship His eyes have dried up Deep inside them The silhouettes of skeletons Tangled in anchors

  After a couple of glasses of wine they founded Mundelein in Illinois. The stars were blurry but the roads were alright, and people came anyway from all over to settle the town. Now every spring in Mundelein the men … Read More

  Men with beards of dirt and fire went around the woods, swinging hammers to symbolize dominion. The marks by which they made themselves known upon the trees were all kept in a book in Williamsport (where even the sidewalks … Read More

  The dumb thing I said keeps coming back to dismantle my house, poor dredged brain with its banging doors and hinges halved to sheer the sky. Swallows traffic the opposite way to the chimney, orange construction cones lift toward … Read More