Trace came home a month after it happened. His parents, Mavis and Wally, picked him up outside the Gaslight Tavern, a bakery box in one hand, an e-cigarette in the other. “Pie’s cherry, I think,” Trace said, passing the box to his father. The pastry box was tied up with green string and topped with a spray of artificial holly…. Read more →
She was glad he was gone that morning. Annie didn’t so much regret as wonder what had compelled her to sleep with Tommy. He was nothing like Charlie; younger, louder, shorter and considerably more full of shit. That was the boy who left an imprint on her mattress, who had told drug stories for the night’s duration. Tommy the critic,… Read more →
One has to be careful what one takes when one goes away forever. – Leonora Carrington When I was younger, I’d say her name for hours. Even before it happened, before I knew who I was. I’d stuff it like cotton balls into the ears of dolls, scrawl it on fogged mirrors, or over my reflection in iced puddles. Her name… Read more →
Kim seems antsy, aggressive. She asks if you’ve ever stared at a turtle. You try to remember. The smell of burnt plastic comes from somewhere unseen. “Sure I’ve stared at a turtle,” you say. “Hasn’t everyone?” Kim leans forward on her elbows, drawing her voice close to the hot sidewalk cement like she’s chatting with the heat, urging the warmth… Read more →
Attended by minimal props—and often within the heat and noise of urban settings—street performers create an atmosphere of risqué spectacle, something like carnival artists operating outside the boundaries of a fairground. Whether making music, transforming balloons into the likeness of animals, or demonstrating traditional circus acts, they blend artforms to create something vibrant and strangely beautiful, an ability unique to… Read more →
One evening last summer I sat on the porch between my daughters, reading. Sitting still so my friend Stacy could paint our portrait. I was reading over and over Frank Bidart’s poem, “Advice to the Players.” The line, Without clarity about what we make, and the choices that underlie it, the need to make is a curse, a misfortune. The… Read more →
Seated in gray swivel chairs sharing teawith a friend beneath the industrial sterilityof corporate phosphorescence, she declaresthat all consciousness is lightabout which I agree but don’t want to admitbecause it means that when in dying,as my grandma shed the opaque fastenersand began to gleam, I held fastto the steal locker of my father’s pain.He wondered how anyone could havelet his… Read more →
I was seventeen / when I devoured my first / car crash / the warped metal made my eyes / roll back / and laser headlights shot out of my / hip bones / I never sleep on my / back / because the cars in my guts / spark against each other / and if I / twist /… Read more →
If we pluck our worries out like pin feathers barbed to chicken skin, one-by-one, free ruffles from bones, will we know each other underneath wings where every fear fanned, plumed in russet and cream, crowded with nits and fleas? From stripped neck to tiny clots of declawed fists, we’re whole birds undressed. Still, we divide— you, barbecue smoke; me, smoothed… Read more →