Valve
Your heart has an open valve.I climb inside and stitch its trapdoor.Nameless corpuscles flit aboutas I float, a blob in a skein of veins,throbbing with you. I paddle upward,catching wafts of men and memoryin your lungs, latching a quick rideup your lusty jugular as you get upfrom your bed. I feel your neckas I slither deeper into your brain,that squishy… Read more →
H-U-M-M-I-N-G-BIRD
in American Sign Language (ASL) gloss {index finger-thumb open-close-quickly-over-heart}lightning {hand-open-there LIPS: BOOM} {hands-down-up-you} flower {petals-open you}sun {you} shimmer-shine shimmer-shine me-feel fly-fly canme-feel mind-high {you your-tongue-wrap-around-mine}get-together {explode LIPS: PUFF} spring sweet-sweet{eat-slurp eat-slurp}
how a bullet works
it huddles warmlyin the nook of a shoulder the joint cleared of its tendons & muscles, arteries, some nerves.it sleeps unaware that its resting is permanentthat its removal would be fatal to the host. soonflesh will close around it, the tendons will thread back together, the muscles mend,the arteries will adjust around its pointed … Read more →
a girl’s name a headline
Two Parents Conference Call at the Halt of the World
When the college where my husband and I both teach English announces virtual meetings, we know there’s only one way to make it: strap our children into their car seats and drive. When this begins, our daughter is not quite two years, and our son is 2 months old, and even when we’re parked, they trust that we’re going somewhere…. Read more →
The Eye Doctor
I was 9 years old, wearing a green plaid dresswith a peter pan collar. Every time I remember my childhood I’m wearing that dress. There was an immensemahogany table. There must have been an eye chart. The Doctor’s hands flapped like dying fishover the top of my dress. I was too young to have breasts. My mother said nothing. I… Read more →
Hitchhiker
Past the checkpoint,you spot a manwith a backpack, wavinga rag above his head.And when your fatherspots him too, takeshis eyes off the roadto take in this figureemerging from the bush,you wonder what he thinks,if he sees himself in this man,if he remembers, as youbelieve the blank starein his face says he does,his own crossing, how itwasn’t until the third, fourth,maybe… Read more →
Abandon
On the shoulder, they rest—truck, car, van. And all afternoon,as you drive past each of them,you wonder why they’ve beenabandoned, if they had run outof gas, had a tire blow out,or if the engine, as personifiedas any object, had just given up,which is what your father saidthat night, years ago, he came homesoaked in sweat, and upon taking offhis shirt,… Read more →
Requiem
And after my father straps a bladeto its claw, and mumbles what I assumeis the end of a prayer, I wonderwhat part of this is real, what sliver of truthpits him against a figure so eagerto thrust his rooster forward, to let gravityguide it to the ground, and to watch—as my father steps back, becomes spectatorand coach—the chaos that ensues,the… Read more →