Secret Origin
Even Jesus’ parents gave competing accounts of his birth. —You were, said his mother, —unexpectedly large. I said to your father, Where had so much child been hiding? I couldn’t believe this huge person had been waiting inside me. Yet his father, squatting, slick with the day’s sweat, his back against a cool interior wall, recalled a different truth. —Tiny…. Read more →
Artifact
You are not a yellowing mapunder his thumb. Or a hoeleft to rust in waxbean fields sheathedin snow. You are a terrainof moments older. A cartographer’snightmare. The lithosphere’s shiftingsister. Tectonic plate heartbeat shaking the bed. Seismicorgasm. River snakingthrough a city remembrance. You grow skyscrapercynical with every hotter winter. Your voiceis not an engine revving or a bald eaglecry in a… Read more →
Inheritance
In his Will, Dad left me the righthand corner of our back porch, the crawlspace where I used to hide out as a child, the basement where he first caught me making out with a boyfriend. Our eldest brother with the weight issues had been left the pantry where the earthquake crackers were kept. The middle brother, who inherited Dad’s… Read more →
Knoxville Blues
The sign says Smokey Bill’s Home for Wayward Reptiles. Dad and I dart through tall grass, dodge alligators grown fierce and left to wither in parking lots. Clumsy tortoises lumber by. We’re rehoming Freddy Furcifer for a one-time fee. Tears run down Dad’s cheeks as he unhooks the cage from the Buick’s back seat. A lizard on a leash. He’s… Read more →
An hour before sunset
Grumbling arrives as we workshop creative ideas in a volatile space. Better to cluster, align. Like a starling finding its place in an erratic sky dance that disrupts boredom and desire. We assimilate, murmurate. But if the near-dark sky calls, perhaps today a single bird can change the course and the dance, and maybe the wind itself will follow.
Doikayt
n. Hereness. n. Diaspora n. “the Yiddish concept… used to describe practices of political organizing and cultural activismamong Yiddishists and Jewish socialists especially during the interwar period.” Hershberg, from the German, meaning “deer hill”or “dear hill”, depending on animism’s sweetness.Moved eastward, sloped downward phoneticallyto Gershberg: Odessa, Baku, Syktyvkar, Brighton Beach. And the Auerbachs: St. Petersburg, Tarnow,Warsaw, Berlin, Krakow, Rzedzin, Plaszow,[Oswiecem], Toulouse, Haifa…. Read more →
Girl With Death Mask
Joshua Tree National Park, Twentynine Palms, California She pictures the boulder they call skull, then her eyes close. That grotesque head calls out from the wonderland of rocks.It calls out from twisting granite monoliths and other stones as sharp as bone shards; from lost palms long gracinga salt-white oasis; from dust hills colored almond and ochre by a rush of sun; from… Read more →
Nipping Out to Get Snacks
Get in he says crawling along the sidewalk in his pickup. I’ll take you anywhere you want. I smile. I’m happy to walk. He rams his fist into the passenger seat. I glance back at the motel, my girlfriend and daughter reading stories about princesses who save themselves. The chrome handle glints in the sun, a warped mirror in which… Read more →
What On Earth
Snow’s deep, blank pages ruled by trunk shadow lines longing for words. Scribes … Read more →