There’s just no scrubbing dawn clean enough to heal last night, or the night before; no muscling gray into motives, wine back into the bottle, its shattering into an intact object passed between hands to warm them. × I never knew words could be coffins. Or I did but didn’t care. Which of us is boxed up & ready for… Read more →
I chewed raw macaroni, uncooked oats, dry field corn from a cob. Gnawed sleeves, collars, and nibbled away erasers. I pulled threads from sweaters, spun them against my mouth’s roof like dialing a compass, then pressed the acute tang of Play-Dough, its misshapen, any-colored fruit deep into my cheek. Someone later said I wouldn’t have licked a frozen metal bridge… Read more →
What is my medium: a block of wood carved by what other people saw. Overwrought by eyes and lathe-workers thumbing me through the small pinch of what remains. I don’t claim to have the right way to dislocate all the barked ideas what it is to be human. Any body knows the false mystique of I’ve got this and you’ve… Read more →
My name braids images as a preverbal toddler. My mother’s loving hands braiding red ribbons in my hair. My bedroom a blue marble across the hall from my parent’s room, another planet. My small girl’s closet full of embroidered blouses, eyelet dresses, and superhero underwear. The dining room where my mother braided loaves of bread and patchwork quilts with yellow… Read more →
Backyard of garter snakes stretched down to soggy marsh. My father left slices of death behind the mower. Up a hill alone to kindergarten. Red-marked worksheets strewn free from my bag. My father’s beercan collection shelved library neat. A rusted nail passed through my shoe. Sideburns and shag carpet. Gray fuel of smoke. My mother at the sink. At the… Read more →
1) Count your days in rocks See if they seem to multiply. The leaves that kept you company are now encased in mud, which will become stone, which will become dust. Notice, how much dust have you (not) cleaned? 2) Look at what’s not done We human are fickle creatures and often start projects that we have no intentions… Read more →
The chisel makes tick sounds shrapneling ice, notes passing time. I’m not sure if I’m digging, carving, or sculpting. Landslides smooth architecture bracing once breathing bodies, stopped clocks. The alchemy unique across bodies. Some hold terror like a baton in a relay race, and pass it on. Some bodies retain terror like a force-feeding. Pathogens are neutral when frozen, here… Read more →
I get stuck in your hair now and again to remind you of when you found me long after the festival was over, how you washed me down with basin water and asked if our blossoming could sync.
you are like an old man who, thinking he once saved a jar of starlight, believes that he can sprinkle it anytime. You look at me, our love gone like a daughter we lost to disease, who now sits each night at our dinner table and refused to be fed. We prop her up anyway and coax silver spoons into… Read more →