The sky in June rises with horns, my grandmother’s about her neck in gold, and sets with chelae, claws, pincers, the many names for mother. A bull gives birth to a crab, a crab to a ram, a ram to the cusp of scorpion and centaur— the sky grows full with parturition. How many names for this? The looking up…. Read more →
The best thing in her life, she would later realize, was the adolescent plum tree that lilted in the backyard of the house she shared with Gerald. In early Spring she would go out to the tree and pick a few plums and bring them back into the house in a basket. On the bad days she would make a… Read more →
Clouds interfere with eloquence as we share stories of all the birds we could not save. We are seated on opposite sofas, tearing apart the silent, squelching skin of grilled chicken breast, and what is arresting isn’t broken beaks, oil-slicked plumes, little pink bodies half-consumed by little black ants, or the fallen trees out back, a chorus of soundless sleeping,… Read more →
He swayed in the quiet, his manuscript in one small hand, and read aloud about the pineapple lamp. A truck rattled the classroom’s gothic windows. Glancing toward the noise, he saw the two, banished from row-desks for shooting paper clips at Mrs. Stumpf’s ass. Starrett’s eyes, crushed to lines by fat, shifted dangerously to Kosek’s. And seeing that, Joshua Gibbons… Read more →
your mother’s mother passed this year / you told yours she couldn’t die / bought a potted miniature rose plant for her / for the kitchen table / he sheds his leaves / the flowers won’t open / you better understand why so many have been walking aimlessly / not unlike plastic bags in wind / but now at the… Read more →
The last time I saw my mother was in Union Square. I was going from an estate sale out in the Mission to my bookstore on Post Street, and I’d phoned her asking if she’d like to meet for brunch. My plan was to fill her full of mimosas, to take her shopping, and then to ever so gently let… Read more →
I once lived in a valley between two hills, so that everyday my departure was a climb, but I always coasted coming home. One evening, as I crested the homebound hill, foot hovering over the breaks, left turn signal blinking, day nearly done – I saw a car, a poor woman and two children, stranded on the roadside. I pulled… Read more →
mother told me about the baby elephant in the Chinese zoo who was rejected by his mother and cried for the next five hours. animal-well of childhood. an animal of grief. I’m O negative, I told her, the universal donor. I’ll need a shot on the 28th week and another one after. to this she warned me about the body,… Read more →
Only one out of ten people born in a year of the Goat finds happiness (十羊九不全) ~ Chinese folk saying Some would drown theirs as soon as they were born. Luck won’t come with age, they’d say, and death in water proved far easier than milk. Some would cut theirs out early to change the animal while others would stop… Read more →