Winter when Lily and I take a bath together. Our bodies side-by-side, foot-to-hip. You can make it sexual if you want, but it isn’t. Michael is in the other room reading. The bath water is almost too hot. Lily leans her head against the wall, her hair trailing in the water, the gold beads of her earrings glittering in the… Read more →
Each year, approximately twenty new state-shaped plaques are erected as part of the Ohio Historical Markers program. Adorned with gold buckeyes, they celebrate nationalist narratives of settler colonialism. The first one I encountered was on a visit to a small liberal arts school. That plaque commemorates the first Episcopal bishop of Ohio, “Pioneer in Higher Education.” My girlfriend at the… Read more →
the plague comes back — he’s trying to bolt the door — the trial exhausts him — to become water again he gambols with a bottle — come dusk the children ask — when will you return — there is an iron gate before the answer — a haunted house of mercy — an old friend survived a snowstorm —… Read more →
Food and family. Famine. Semya i yeda. Golod. Голод. Семья и еда. All hunger when I think of Dedushka Senya. How his mouth opened as big as his heart and stayed open to command Babushka to shut hers or spoon-feed him soup or bring him tea or cut up his meat or read him the menu because putting on glasses… Read more →
A let-go bunny pet comes to me, spiked hair between his ears. He wants a carrot, celery. I only have the ripped lettuce, slathered in mayo, I pull from my sandwich; I toss it down to him, watch him drag it backward a few feet then nibble. He sneezes, and I wonder if he can eat dairy. He can’t eat cabbage,… Read more →
The cube of 5 is 125, expressed as a sum of two squares in two different ways: 125 = 10² + 5² = 11² + 2². Our family of 5 makes an odd-numbered cube: father, mother, son, daughter, daughter; or man, woman, boy, girl, girl; or Philippe, Jennifer, Benjamin, Daniella, Simone. * 125 is called a Friedman number in base… Read more →
Through slit-like blinds,bright sycamore leaves. Inside,blankets in their usual heap. Slowly, we circle the actual thing. I cannot locate it in the body– that ravenous hope. After, the treeso green it could burstinto blossom – but won’t.
The quiet sighof May evening. Outside, what cars remain turnslowly toward home. Alone indoors, we pray desperately to our gods. Surely the people are grass. Surely the people are grass.