Author Archives: Salamander Intern

  Flagpole or war ship, the first purple asparagus drills its blunt rigging through the dirt. You want to say worship this— but it’s relentless, like the first time you stick your finger down the baby’s throat. How wrong to … Read More

  Clambering down the rocky bank she found the fish sleeping below a viridian copse of chestnuts. Somewhere inside the night she had heard their crying and it had led her here. She had walked through glass stained the color … Read More

  for Wanda Coleman   If you break enough lines, eventually you have something that’ll kindle & catch like a tar paper shack or a wedding dress. A long gone woman once took a stone to all her words until … Read More

  All’s rooted here in forgiveness— forgiver and forgiven deep   in the textured present. Pleasure rises from the dappled surface,   where, in the chaos of patterns, a woman emerges, then   another, flowered dress against flowered wall.   … Read More

  Flap from your sea grass shelter, hiss at the dog who flushes you out lumber lopsided a zigzag track like a bride dragging her heavy train. Your fractured wing makes you denser than sky. Watch your flock fly away … Read More

  Have you heard the one about the nun and the penguin in the bathtub and the nun drops the soap and says to the penguin, Do you think you could fish that out? And the penguin says, What do … Read More

  Today I try to touch you through your voice now chattled to the answering machine and answering to our password TRICK which fails to trick you to emerge—-merely bypasses to robotic messages—-“give, support”—-or reminds of an appointment or something … Read More

  He pecks me awake before the hills have rolled out their green tongues. This is why I love the woodpecker best of all the birds in our double-woods. (It is easy to love the woodpecker best if you are … Read More

  Woman comforting an injured dog, the caption the morning after the tornado says, but if you click for the bigger picture, the text changes to woman comforting an injured and dying dog. It’s the same image, enlarged and without … Read More

  I need a flashlight to find the flashlight, but make do without, feeling my way down the basement stairs, brailling my hands along the packed shelves where we keep flashlights, canned peas, the crank radio—what’s good in an emergency. … Read More

  We say that: still life, the way we say stay to the dog already gone.

  Uncrook their white elbows for ten wild minutes to point with abandon as if they were choosing a chocolate assortment.   Designate which of the fleurs de lis inscribing their bellyhearts will serve as tongues, and lick something.   … Read More