A Letter
Dear Reader, The work we’ve read during this past submission cycle has been astounding, and because of the…
All of Us Animals
Boys everywhere—actors, singers, models—bodies hairless and hips slim, leaned against palm trees. A thousand gazes follow us always.
Adverse
Even in the dim yellow light I could see the hives spreading across my neck where your stubble had burned me.
The Life-Long List of Lies That I’ve Told You
Race for the Cure, 2008. I write your name on my pink dedication bib, use extra safety pins…
Flying Dolls
It must have taken him weeks to build them, to glue the mixture of rice and crushed glass to the string.
Instructions for Waking & Four More Poems
bring the cigarettes out, and drinks for you and Dan,
left the Diet Cokes there, sweating on the ledge.
Tonight you’ll allow me to stay for no other reason than to listen.
You knew what I would become. But I can’t remember words now,
Gulf
"Skate babies," he said cryptically. "Protects them from all the dangers." He flapped a leathery arm towards the snack bar and drawled something about signs.
Like Disaster
The news suggests that acid rain is to blame. Years of acid rain falling unchecked, seeping into the ground and doing what acid does, eating away at everything it touches. Scientists point to plastic models, removable chunks revealing concavities in the earth, the surface too thin to support what’s on top.
The Future Carries Us Forward to Winter
You stand in the hall poking at the window blinds. They’re old vinyl, faded yellow and nearly melted with years of endless sun. Your fingers walk to eye-level, push a slat up so you can see out, and then climb higher. Above your head you reach to press your finger, through the hole of a bent, half-broken slat, all the way to the fogged glass.
Heartleaf Philodendron
I had stereotyped her. She wasn't shy or cautious, but flung the door open to reveal a riot of colourful living. A floral-patterned rousari was settling over the crown of her skull as if it had just dropped from heaven. The ends of it draped loosely beside her thin arms. I didn't know where to look, and tried not to flick my curious gaze to her periphery. It meant meeting her eyes, those eyes.
Remembrance
The photo album is dry like carefully stored tinder, the dried rose petals haphazardly stuck on the front look yellowed and frail.
The Shore
A Maine morning, sea and sky muddled gray. She’d picked her way from the beach to a small piney island across a stretch of seafloor low tide had left bare.
Melanoma: The Politics of My Skin
One moment of quiet and I’ll be
able to think about stitches
without my skin crawling out
from under me, away,
like leather on my body.
Micro / Cosmos & Two More Poems
Once the whole is divided, the parts need names. / There are already enough names. –– Lao Tsu
Desk Lunch
She skitters away on her keyboard: Tic tac tac tac tic. Then pauses to scratch her head; the noise a cacophony, forming a symphony of disturbance that rattles my loaded head. Every day she rattles me.
capreolsapien gives thanks too late
to thank the pines for letting the snow melt
for letting grass grow between their feet
How to Make a Dogpatch Cake or, Baking Something Out of Nothing
She always has at least 1 can of cherry pie filling socked away somewhere—God knows why—the woman don’t even bake.
After You Were Granted Joint Custody
the background to try and lull them to sleep.
Lancing the Toe & Unbreakable
In the middle of surviving you, I sat on the sidewalk outside the bookshop that paid me too little, sterilized a safety pin with the flame of a lighter and stabbed it through my right
big toe.
At the End of One Thing
Glimpses of what-ifs. Hail Mary passes. That's what this ink really says: please stay; we can do this.
Revision & Two More Poems
I can count the number
of times we touched
on two hands plus
two feet, plus your
hands and your feet.
The Bees & Two More Poems
The surprise clusters of brown pears punctuate the leaves.
My children burst down the pickers’ lane
their feet smashing the rotten fruit
into a fragrant mess, a prayer in earth.
It is all too much.
Then and There
A rook snags a branch in the sycamore
outside my bedroom window. That’s not what
I’m thinking about.
These Are My Dress Clothes
I could be a shutter, about to fall off its hinge and be consumed by feral shrubbery. Start a new life as a rotting piece of wood. Natallie raises her fist to knock, but the door opens. He looks like someone who once sold bathrobes in a plaza. Long, red, veiny hair combed over a blonde face.
In My Sleep I am Wounded a Thousand Times
The itching begins at night. Fire on my scalp, ears aflame. I was dreaming about butterflies and barbed…
The Pilgrims
I HEARD THE FLIES BUZZ TWICE IN MY LIFE, ONCE OVER THE DEAD BODY ON THE RIVERSIDE, AND ONCE…
art vs. blowjobs & on kindness
our wanderings conjure desire, the selfish kind—hunger
to ask for more without bothering to hear the answer.
If the World Ends
What if it came crashing down, I thought. What if it fell like a blanket and smothered us all.
Hineni
The night of my parents’ funeral, she told me that the most important thing you can tell people, dead or alive, is that you are here. On this earth.
The Kids That Look Like Me Keep Dying
Leaning bicycles on old iron fences.
The kids grow out their bowl cuts.
The merry-go-round weeps
behind the Baptist church.
Roots
Two Saturdays after Joe and I get married and buy a house in the Upper Ninth Ward, a…
The Drive South
When the waitress left, Kate locked eyes with Jase and said rather than asked, “What if they don’t let us into his room at the hospital.”