Ice Cream Village
Vanilla scoops top milky roofs, slide down in the rich heat of noon. Every tongue stretched to every abode— a custom lascivious, neighborly. All the children stoutish. The adults pallid soft shadows in rubber boots plodding through sweet puddles. Gleaming gutters funnel melted run-off into barrels for animals, fattening themselves sick. The daily ritual of heaping more where thawed spots… Read more →
Near Misses
Summer is lakes and stiff wind. Thin skin is atmosphere, body and hard science. After midnight we face into Earth’s orbit, open all windows, scale back the roof. We don’t know how big meteors are. If I threw you, beloved, along the bright surface of our planet, would your flesh flare bright enough to reach this campsite, ledged over the… Read more →
Bird Village
Feathers atop leaves coat the trees. A wild plumage spills down in strong weather and the ground turns into a riotous smear. Guano glues down the loose cobblestones and lightens the blackened stonework of the church; its colored glass windows open so as to fill the apse with constant wing and flash. Here the hymns are hollows carved in air—the… Read more →
The Marriages: The bear
Been up since Tuesday salving your grease into the claw mark on my shoulder. Slick and soothing on the tender skin, the ragged edges. Spent most of winter so far in the next room over, my pajamas delicious against your sweet fur, and the snow outside foot-deep hunks of glass could never trickle in the edges, never see our eyes…. Read more →
Swimming Laps in Advent (2016)
In every lane, thoughts trouble the water. Kelly thinks about her flower shop: can she can get enough red roses after the hurricane? Helen wonders was she right not to have the breast removed? Yes. No. Yes. No. Clare worries about her mother, who can’t remember what she had for breakfast and won’t use a walker and won’t give up… Read more →
Eye Contact
Masae reaches out for a bowl that I inevitably push towards her. She asks me to describe what she is feeling in her fingertips. Blueberries – I tell her. Good for your eyes – I tell her. She continues staring at an awkward spot on my cheek. Decently ripe – I tell her. No more rotten than the fruit in… Read more →
The Marriages: The selkie
Sometimes when you’re sleeping so deeply the walls breathe with you I slip on your skin rich oil at my hips and shoulders and it does nothing to my flesh not even when I’m staring straight from the window to the ocean not even when I’m watching the slick heads bob in and out of whitecaps looking for you—not even… Read more →
Inheritance
the childhood sat between us we stepped around it careful of each other’s space examined the edges, sharp and smooth looked for give, some opening— it was still so new thumping revealed only that it was mostly solid— hollows here and there impresent, like impossible he said, and I could only agree we were both still learning the language