Not so much The End of The World as the end of humanity and whatever unlucky animals we take down with us. Every nice day, I think about the last nice day. The final Spring. The last flower that dies in a world with people in it. In the future will there be a human version of the crocodile, the… Read more →
Three tornadoes take out the power and I give my mother updates on the hour. There’s another watch, another storm coming. But don’t worry Mom, I’ve prepared as much as I could, sandbags and cans of vegetable mush and enough kush for a blackout. This is the contract we sign, two hundred fifty days of sunshine for front row seats… Read more →
After Marina Abramović If given honey, if given a scalpel, what then?Our choices are laid out before us: bread, wine, grapes, a pistol,and a bullet. A child on his father’s shouldersstares over a sea of people. The room busies with murmuringbefore everyone goes mute. The time is ours,the woman is ours. Men in collared shirts begin to choose:a rose, a… Read more →
I turned up that exact snapshot: recognized nobody, nothing, just as it knew not either of me. Police radio chatter & deep calming breaths: step predicts into its next step heel to toe. History to blame: makes whatnot so. You wait in the hall forever for time to be up. The fire door. The search party. Skin, bones & the… Read more →
To say it is or isn’t. To be a toothless cuntless godless ghost. You ask the questions whose answers make the whole night & next morning flaccid. If I could love a stranger half as much as I want to cripple your words I would leave myself for the blue man holding roller skates at the end of the block…. Read more →
Hadn’t it been for the two peregrine falcons, I could’ve quibbled today’s versification along in typical cryptic– disguising the joy as grief & vice-versa– but first, submit to my credit, I did tuck a bow paddle responsively to the stern & with few complaints, such as why, human, overcoached yet ostensibly possessed of a free will, can’t I shrug myself… Read more →
You will never know I am here, beneath your feet, but I will feel the tread of your boots as you move down the trail, between trees whose roots shape my own corridors. How incongruous your method of movement, so many limbs to coordinate, the process of mastering balance. As you push your body through the air, do you feel… Read more →
I traverse ages across orange-red tiles, ceramic, beautiful, rich in hue and tone and warmth, like a cathode ray tube shot from them to us and back again, my mind a buckshot mess of uncertainty. But tomorrow finds me with radium Brazil nuts voyaging through my veins, penetrating my weakened sinews, long since severed from their purpose, me, asleep, nearly… Read more →
He wraps his arms around my waist in front of the boiling pot. Sturdy, the hands of an Irish mother, our obstetrical instruments shaving down their own bacteria. I think about legacies, the parents in us, the same escapes we fail until, somehow, it all locks in place. What lies our bodies tell. He taught me to butcher, the biggest… Read more →
A Poem by Sina Behmanesh, Translated by Bänoo Zan They wrote on the walls:Death to smiles I was a mouthI died They wrote on the walls:Death to kisses I was a mouthI died They wrote on the walls:Death to poetryDeath to words I was a poetI was a mouthI became a scream To turn all walls to mouthsI write my… Read more →