Coal mining as loss-chasing
I don’t gamble much, but the mine struck me as casino- ish. Nobody ends up there accidently, there’s no windows, there’s no clocks, every last machine beeps and flashes, every last light’s strategically placed and in between it’s unsettling dark. I saw a bird underground once, and a mushroom under a beltline that dripped a chemical composition evidently nutritious enough… Read more →
Leisure Time
preen the image | in the videochat camera | gaze all day at it \ rub the teeth with finger | while conversing / with far-distant brethren | subsist / by self-soothing touch | license self | dole of chocolate | or iteration | of Candy Crush | mind modulates self | self-replicating machines | from the start | by… Read more →
From Ashes
I am not grieving, even underneath the forest canopy though the edges of my life have curled where the leaf litter crumbles like paper set on fire, charred and turned into decay that feeds a more precious nature due to its brush with death and more tinder-like qualities: dry, brittle, catches with abundantly close vigor, burns long enough to release… Read more →
The Story That Needs You
After Emily Bernard A mother’s blackberry heart ferments, juices. It’s not that her voice jellies. It’s that she’s beholden to therapy for sixteen-year-olds. Cliff she can’t help. Lick she can’t taste. The whir of the question: Do fathers get asked what their children think of their work? No clouds, no brambled bush, no story.
Bachelard and the Artist Interrupt Each Other
outside & inside my lines, oily red are both scribbled intimate spaces matter of passion they are always heat and downbeat ready to be brushed away reversed the hand tries to exchange their limned loops of ` hostility bodies pained if there exists a refugee in a borderline shadowed shade surface caught in between such masked smiles an inside of… Read more →
My mother spins the compost
One bin is a big black barrel that spins and spins and one is a barrel for collecting rain water and there are scattered cups and tubs amidst the matted grass, half-closed lids full of tomato rinds and avocado skins. She shows me what’s inside the barrel, but it’s too cold to smell the earth so I focus my eyes… Read more →
When Cicadas Stopped Chirping
Father sprinkled White Rabbit candies in Min’s coffin. Mother screamed, “Let me go with my son!” If Mr. and Mrs. Chen, who lived across the stream, hadn’t held Mother back, she would have plunged into the wooden coffin Father built. He gave Mother a loud slap and shouted, “Stop it!” His eyes were red, but never shed a tear. Shan’s… Read more →
The Wedding Photo
Sunburned and jet lagged from my Mexican honeymoon, I head to my mom’s house, where she has summoned me to collect some wedding gifts and cards in her care. The photo gallery in her foyer stops me cold. She rearranged it to accommodate a new focal point, a large, framed photo of Chris and me on our wedding day. In… Read more →
A Story You Know
Winter when Lily and I take a bath together. Our bodies side-by-side, foot-to-hip. You can make it sexual if you want, but it isn’t. Michael is in the other room reading. The bath water is almost too hot. Lily leans her head against the wall, her hair trailing in the water, the gold beads of her earrings glittering in the… Read more →