She swallowed me, when we were young; or sidled like a shoplifter, over, till our outlines joined. Sometimes I vibrate just above her body, so she can feel the air move through her spaces. And when she can’t talk about her parents’ wills, or panics before a trip, when her heart breathes drab flashes of fear through a body so… Read more →
Tulum, Mexico Because into every life some sudden lover must slough, like sand through a wet bathing suit, let the burns and abrasions blare reckless witness When he stops to the horny scurrying of ghost crabs when he steps outside to smoke. So right, rifle through his bag to find prayer cards folded accordion style and a couples’ therapy… Read more →
Starbucks makes these Starbucks-green plastic devices that you think are stirrers at first, or sandwich picks, drink-garnishes topped with a smooth curve of green mermaid etch, and sometimes there might be that ragged-sharp middle edge where plastic tore imperfectly from its mold, and you can see the green plastic trays they snap out of at the factory, but after you… Read more →
The neighbor who never smiles steps out of his dress shoes in a parking space, leaves their velvet mouths to soak, tongues still lapping the milk-round bellies of clouds. There are no clues, only pennies pressed in fresh asphalt, smell of burn, black windows reflecting the same sunken face, until one day I see through—she’s surrounded by stacks of folders… Read more →
She watched the fishermen drag the boy up the muddy bank. His hair the only thing moving. * Mother made her chamomile tea, while the neighbor whispered through the steam: twice the size— had to slice the seam of his suit— She imagined him split in two, the fine line between dressed and undressed. She dropped her cookie into her… Read more →
Anything transmitted by blood, anything “generational” makes you feel accursed or a queen, depending. If it is in the water, so as in mother’s milk and the cow’s milk and the calf’s. It is in airport souvenirs at Da Nang, in the soil, in the worms, in the brown glass of a Tiger beer bottle, which everyone on Facebook keeps… Read more →
When the CNN reporter asks a woman at the Kabul market why after ten years of liberation do wives still walk behind their husbands, she replies landmines. Sometimes practical answers are the most unimaginable. I was going to say something about the half-mast flag of American exceptionalism, but then the sun came out on this, the last Sunday in May… Read more →
There is a kind of pressure in humans to take what is most beloved to them and smash it. – Anne Carson If my despair shatters could I hurt you: Wobble neck snapped. In my hands. I break you into scream… ease does not wash me, rock water begins its pound: Swim, I tell myself, Swim— but deep… Read more →
Jutka, I miss your fingers, the touch I know only now that it is gone. My fellow soldier is not deft, puncturing skin as he plies splinters from my ass, the needle clumsy in his paws. His idea – a night out of this hole, the danger receding, safety in disguise. We dressed like ugly spinsters, but Soviet dicks are… Read more →
: inperchment If you put a tiger in a tree you are asking a child to read the bible. Not a or an, as in umbilical cord: fluids pumped through then solid and gross and the bible, and other things not solid, more able, prepared. Articles, really. Indirect and implied and not. The gimmy-two-shoe-shuffle, and butter,… Read more →