—after Johannes August Nahl’s “The Tomb of Madame Langhans” Bury a woman with her stillborn, the baby crawls out fingers first as the child of Maria Magdelena Langhans: Cherubic as a messiah. When a man breaks death in art: … Read More
Strung out on a bench, I’ve worn light from a streetlamp, golden as an art halo or any manufactured light. I’ve pissed that gold into a sink at work, then served over-medium eggs hot, coffee cooled and too strong. … Read More
Was when I was watching Misty Copeland dance “The Nutcracker” on mute, As I listened to “The Point of No Return” by Immortal Technique. It was simply beautiful. What other words could I use? Fierce. Elegant. Magical. The thought … Read More
watering too much. Watering too little. Not providing enough sunlight or providing too much. Letting cold air overcome them. With concern pitched at the right octave, the green, gangly things will survive, if not thrive, alongside us and, thus … Read More
our most tender overtures toward each other have turned against us, targeted us for shortness of breath and breadth of lifespan. When I tell you it’s dead outside, I mean people are dying outside—zipped in plastic bags and set … Read More
The quiet page is drenched but the snow keeps filling it up your fountain pen loops are the tangles you couldn’t comb out of your daughter’s hair when you were alive knotted now in the walls of a hummingbird’s … Read More
—after Zhang Zao A letter opens and time turns back a letter opens and a wound appears a letter opens with an apology and closes with an exclamation point a letter opens and the words are like birds … Read More
you were born between having & not having: in a cream-tone house with orange trimming, bombs hang on either side of your country like parentheses. there are grocery stores, swings & grass, but no seasons— just … Read More
Standing and staring out into the murky spaces of night where the bushes lose themselves to obscurity, a scintillation occurs, a happenstance, a brief blinking, off/on, as in: non-being/being. Firefly, lightning bug, as though to exist is to bug, … Read More
which in this country means just gone two, a speckled black and white cat creeping under a hedge, the sun an orange foil over high rooftops, lawn damp and shimmery in the gleaned light, ornaments on the bare branches … Read More
I am the parasol through which she enters this world and if I were to rid myself of her, pull her from me like a layer of skin, she would roam this land like a beast, using … Read More
Bells. Then silence and trembling. Touching a photograph, I count the dead. The furnace rumbles. Candles flare. There’s no card from my mother to stand with the others on the mantle. As a child, I fell asleep … Read More