You daughter is dead. How do you begin from there. But I wouldn’t know what to tell him. He has been leaving messages for more than a month. I saved them all but then accidentally erased them, so can’t call him. The landlord said she died suddenly while careening around the curve, her body floating out with the tide. I… Read more →
The bananas perch in the bowl, severed as a woman’s hand. I am undressing in the kitchen, want you to touch me, severed as a woman’s hand. Divorce me, if you want to, I want you to touch me right here, in the kitchen lights— Divorce me if you want, I know what this looks like right here, in the… Read more →
we were playing ping pong or mah jongg or ding dong the witch was dead on arrival or at a revival she was borne out or again in a hearse but what’s worse she was cooking the books or with gas up a storm and for looks she was normally over the hill or the flu or somewhere over the… Read more →
“I really don’t know why I’m calling…” On the green couch in the rectory living room, I’m not primed for a sweet response – in the same mood as I always find myself when I go a long period of time without a cigarette. I catch a glimpse of Bob Holden carrying on a conversation on the office phone. He’s… Read more →
tv quits can’ting and smokes much And I quit tv and I too can’t smoke watch tv, … Read more →
‘Because you chose it.’ Says the author of the article
I find the photo among his family’s old things: brass animal figurines (gazelle, birds, a deer), a tearing-at-the-stitching limp frog hand puppet, wedding china never used. In the photo, there is a boy, no more than eight or nine. He is holding something up. I can’t tell what it is. All angles. A piece of glass maybe? The photo is… Read more →
after Job When no one is here, I eat all the cheesecake with my unwashed hands. I’ve forgotten what my face looks like, as I will forget yours. I feel a pounding, sharp wings or stones shaking, African violets. Branches—what grows there? At night I sleep on a couch near… Read more →
This crucifix? Enormous? Ski off of it! Got lost around Indian River and the Michigan snow thickening on the road. Robbie says, “We’re not going to make it up there tonight. Vast distances.” He’s tired from all the beers, plus we’ve been passing a little ganja around the car, the four of us. The smoke’s quite thick and the car… Read more →
My grandfather creates clocks, grandfather clocks, and it seems unpoetic now though it used to seem ironic and canny, before I knew what irony was, before I’d read Freud and swore off meat and milk on Mondays for the boys out to war. He converted his daughter’s doll room into a clock repair shop, gears and glass faces spilling out… Read more →