Uber, tornado, romantic aspiration, deep psychological insight, deep horniness, whatever it was; and whatever it was we said to the other seventh-grade boys to get them to pull their underpants down, and the fights we had with our … Read More
A streetlamp scorching the cloth of night, a barbed acanthus on a wrought-iron fence, he was a platter of lemons and salted wounds. He could not tend. He seeded soft ground, then choked whatever grew with his boarding-school tie. … Read More
In the hinge between a summer of open-air dining and falling case numbers and the oncoming winter of closed doors and stuffy classrooms, we begin to compromise my son’s immune system. They are the color of … Read More
trust, surrender, broth on the stove, yesterday’s bones when she was young, eva named the chickens now she only names her dresses—night-elk, goldenrod stable-stained, wild plum, a well-made dress will out -last the love, repeats her sister, who flung … Read More
When I want to beat up the world with my fists, my forearms boil over with an easy rage. Sometimes I forget to breathe and nearly die. In my hands are words I cannot enunciate clearly with my voice, … Read More
for Frannie, at four months Even in sleep you hunger: purse your lips and bellow your cheeks as though to nurse from the world. Material things, you’ll outgrow, and quickly. So here are the summer afternoons of … Read More
White Guy #1 to receive White Guy #2 Named Fellowship for Distinguished Position as Dead White Guy #3 Chair of University Department X. White Guy #1 named recipient of Prestigious Grant aa by Committee of White Guy #2, … Read More
i. in seventh grade I learned to pray in Spanish is rezar edged like razor, work & worship, I learned adoption was life’s sword: maldición//malediction, bendición//benediction, doubled & edged beatitude I should give thanks, I learned— ii. she … Read More
broke clean—one corner snapped away from the blue-black lacquered whole, a long slender triangle like a gymnast in three-quarter split exposing raw bone of ceramic. Your response, a heavy sigh, held more than what could have ever been plated … Read More
1. You are wood, you are wool, you are the intricate skeleton of the desiccated leaf, of the dead dehydrated papyrus-bloom 2. you are simple as a scroll of cedar shaving 3. That’s neither here nor there. … Read More