A Year Spent in Central New York
My neighbor, whose cigarettesmoke wafts up heating vents,yells at the television, cursingimmigrants//demands a wall. I used to take my cats outsideto play, but then he set loosehis dog, who I tackled and heldto the ground. He said she liked to eat squirrels, didn’t knowthe difference between themand cats. He was pleased,unconcerned by the whiningbeneath my body. I whispered calmly into… Read more →
Harlequin Promises
Marble
It turned up in the loam, a sharpening eyeamong pyrite and rhizomes.The clay brushed away like tireddehydrated eyelashes, opening a lid to the eggshell paperleaves of breakfast light. Round and bald under my sweeping thumb,it was a hemisphere droppedfrom the back of the Star Turtle and I blew breezes like a shaky godacross its continents and schoolsand panic rooms and… Read more →
I’m Fine
Once more you’ll find me staring at my reflection and wiggling each tooth just to make sure they’re not loose like at 4 a.m. in REM mode and ripping layers and layers with blood gushing curlicues down the drain so that’s why it’s backing up only a few months after we snaked it out, the mouthwash gunk and gobs of… Read more →
Patio Fence
use a lot of muscle, lifting that fence it’s rotting at the post: I can’t stop being seen, I’m glass gray streaks on the blue sky a bird crossing it charged with what’s in me the plane in the back of the sky blinks like a drone I come at the air it takes me till the trunk is danger… Read more →
Ghost Variations
My support group jerked and juttedinto a crowd mob full of phantomsdancing about us, unbothered bydeath but eager to bicker aboutwhich of us addicts masquerade as alive best.Eventually, one ghost hammers the asphaltwith his feet, fashioning an inclineto tilt us into finite. Sensing danger,one of us declares his love for all gods.Most of the others split themselves intochips of flint,… Read more →
Porous
We spilled some of her ashes on our way through the woods. The weight of the urn tore a hole in the backpack, and the urn hit the ground hard, knocking the lid loose. She had been gone a while, but it came to us that our favorite spot, a quiet bank by the river, was a good resting place…. Read more →
Endemic
Ceiba, its roots slate gray, thin and tall like walls,provided protection contra el sol sofocante.Provided materials for the Taínos to build canoes with. Its bark was solid but kept over rough waves.The canoe fishing, tradition. No one bats an eyeif you can’t catch a fish. Pero eres una anomalía if you can’t cook a family dish passed down generationsthat somehow… Read more →
There Are Actually Four Versions of You, All True
Yaso Saijo wrote a poem, “Tomino’s Hell,” after losing his family during World War I, Maene whispers. Maene thinks the poem is a curse. You’re afraid of Maene, she is the eldest in your middle school dormitory, and you know the poem exists to kill whomever reads it aloud, and yet you listen. The ceiling fan whirls, the wind beyond… Read more →