poetry

  One at the end of the fence line was all rot, And more rot, the ghostly maps of leaves. Another, clogged like a drain, came up in gobs, In billowing handfuls of slime. And the one A mile away, … Read More

  —after Howard Moss’s “Tropical Fish”   Prism smears of runoff through elastic rainbow sand, And nurdle beaches dish into a bin of brilliant bay, Translucent puffs, and bobbing box and bottle fish, Storm cloud schools of polyethylene, and glint, … Read More

  Your cousins, a few friends line up in the pew. Your brother— absent. He stole from you, lied that you locked your cupboards to starve him, tried to con five G for burial when he wasn’t dead. The priest … Read More

  The lamp that flickered, your keyring, my daughter’s childish portrait, a watercolor rose.   I listed aloud the room’s familiar items like a ship’s manifest   to soothe you, recovering from binge, to sleep.   Who knew the time … Read More

  You brought rifles, knives, katana, bow and arrows to the house, as if still hunkered down in your Brooklyn apartment, still pommeled by friendly fire, your mother’s drinking. Like your dad, with his shots lined up on the bar. … Read More

  The morning glories I saw less than a month ago can’t be flowering now, more snow than expected yesterday,   and several nights of heavy frost the past few weeks, but vines may still twine the standing corn, field … Read More

  We were kids in school together, though not friends or playmates, just in the same class, and now, decades later, he jacks deer, travels the roads in his pickup at night   along the fields and when no one’s … Read More

  a box of frogs arrived one day at our front door, special delivery? My dad had ordered them. Laboratory frogs, he called them. Said they were ours; we could let them loose in a kiddie pool in the basement; … Read More

  My father’s childhood home was condemned a few years before. Looking at the simple house, above us on the slight hill, I wanted to enter, except my tía stopped me, pointing to the home now alive with wasps and … Read More

  I find disappointment in the Midwest—how they keep wanting me to be Mothman. We both wear red eyes and wings, but I take no joy in knocking down bridges or scorching summertime. Some seem impressed with how much blood … Read More

  Inside the mask, hot with my own breath and the toxic smell of cheap rubber, I look through eye-holes into the mirror and see a predictably demented clown.   “This is no good,” I say, unpeeling the damp latex … Read More

  I get it. There is nothing inherently creepy about an empty swing swinging on an abandoned playground. But the ghost pushing it is a problem. You remind of my friend, America. She used to say weird things, like, “All … Read More