Making hay takes two hayracks, a baler, a tractor, a hay elevator, and as many willing people as possible to help: the wrestling coach who doubles as a livestock auctioneer, the butcher, Miss Mapleton, people from the bowling league, and the Eagle Hi-Fliers 4-H club. The track coach is here, the postal carrier, the John Deere implement dealer, and the… Read more →
I’m telling. You could hardly tell us apart. We looked identical. Hey twin. Picked last like the worst fruit we stood in back the tallest split to different teams. I’m falling apart. Old shale buckling above a volcanic cellar. Sharecropper miner of sedimentary slag. Slate chattering down my side. I’m a late bloomer obsidian finally glassing my station. Bonafide. Hedge… Read more →
There are hate crimes plus engraved signs encased with cement lines, that cement lines which are bought with black lives. The blood spilled only fills the groove upon the tossed quarters. Pitched by the kids courted by the kids responsible for the kid, whose back toss is now lost for about the same amount of money. What’s funny, is now… Read more →
says the bottom bulb’s full blown, calls it bun. It’s ancient. Only a few months ago my neurologist showed me scans of my sinus cavity, the sphere of fluid nestled there, probably not growing. This was the not- dangerous cyst. He said sensitive, overactive, any pain, lots of headaches? I told him no before remembering rising in airplanes, how the… Read more →
This is not the neighborhood for you, my ex-friend said. Eyed through the coffee shop’s sun-collared window a murder of crowing guys storm-trooping down the street as I lit a smoke forgetting I was in AmeriKa. Ex has no idea she’s a dog. She had set out flowered tea cups for coffee the day I wanted to leave my husband…. Read more →
The day it snowed in the Sahara is the day you left us. The honey- amber dunes morphed into the white knuckles of mountain peaks. As the flakes were falling, you were dropping F-bombs across the house, sending the kids running for cover, hands pressed over ears, heads in their laps. In the Sahara, the sandman slept under a blanket… Read more →
I carried a doll into class today, buried in my briefcase like a dead bird. I’ve never carried a dead bird in my briefcase, but I’ve buried feathers and the most fragile bones in my mouth so when I speak, I offer the chance to fly. These fictions are what I tell myself in the deep dark but the doll… Read more →
Flash of fur — wolf burst out from the highway’s hidden, forbidden margins. We saw each other’s fierceness through the bright and dirty glass. Loneliness blooms from sweat. What flowers Might the outcast know, queer & ignored by the pack focused on their own warm throats? Wolf or coyote, I dreamt that he was mine though whimperings call house dogs… Read more →
I want to make a gun– Platinum, the stock scored With rosewood’s grain. The bullets will leave the barrel As aimless as the gypsy moths Eating July in green bites. My gun will kill every other gun, A cannibal. No more kidneys Pierced, urine alkali in spleen, Bile spilled, livers unmolested. Crows will be uninterested In the metal carcasses. Then… Read more →
A bigger boy, pimples like the ungentle world across his cheeks, pushes my 8-year-0ld as they get on the bus. I see it and I cannot pull my son back to our kitchen, where he stood just this morning in his socks, with the refrigerator open long, getting milk for his cereal. Or to… Read more →