Volume 15, Issue 2

Drive-By

Fistful of fear slacks my joints with a tendency to brazen the blood. So many corners in this sweet town of four thousand ruffles call out the riff of fractured boredom. One God-given single lane of circle-rouge girls hop up on strangers and a shift to the benign. A vacant infestation of weed and unconventional fingers encompass a gnarl of… Read more →

Life Without Randall

 “Gwendolyn ran up the stairs to the roof.” Randall backspaced, deleting “to the roof.” He hesitated, then deleted “ran up the stairs,” and stared at the computer screen. He’d heard that Flaubert could spend an entire day on one sentence, but this wasn’t exactly Madame Bovary. “Gwendolyn teetered on the edge of the roof.” Randall backspaced again, leaving him with… Read more →

Reality: Now You See It. Now You Don’t.

Women called me a she-wolf. In their lack of understanding they claimed I foraged for prey while the blood of my last innocent still dripped from my fangs. Local moralizers stood ready to oust me from the place of my birth but rather than run, I strengthened my stance and insisted that every man, however unconscionable his upbringing, however frightened,… Read more →

Costumes

Once a Winter Carnival Vulcan lungedat me from a parade, a red-suited devilin ski goggles, and rubbed his stubbled faceon mine, leaving grease paintand fear behind. In New Orleans,a Mardi Gras jester in jingle-bell capsqueezed a bystander’s breastwhile bedecking her with purple beads. In a land of make-believe and magic,people spin on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride,listen to “It’s a Small… Read more →

A Handful of Memories

In my dream I am familiar. I hold the memory of my father in my hand― this is how I grow chrysanthemum for the scars I carried for all these years. Put a sugar in a boy’s mouth and words grow into flowers. Birds settle by my window and draw before me the lines between staying and leaving: you know… Read more →

Refrigerator on the Freeway

Traffic report, Morning Edition, NPRJanuary 2020 All the scattered calamities we leavebehind, those migrations leaving their trail of chaos, saltwater intrusion in Louisianamarshes, ice-free winters in the Bering Sea another spring of beeless trees, the heave of a king tide over washed-out walks, but who can slakethat thirst raking through each of us. Someone is waiting for their refrigerator.Wandering and unplugged,… Read more →

Three Boats and a Silence

1 When Otto told me about the Danish resistance smuggling  Jews to Sweden in fishing boat holds slippery with guts how they wouldn’t take anyone who couldn’t followthe dagger-eyed command for silence no one with a cough, no babiesdrawing German lights toward sound  I couldn’t get that out of my mind. Every time I felt a sneeze coming on I wondered… Read more →