Hailstorm
During the hailstorm, we were pelted by thick crystalline balls like when my favourite necklace broke, beads dancing on the kitchen floor, and I dared you to grab me like that again; one time too many.
What we’re leaving behind (map)
dry lakebed & hot wind where music used to live dry lakebed & hot wind where bees used to dry lakebed & hot wound where the moon dry lakebed & no forest all dust dry lakebed & weed-cracked highways dry lakebed & what passed for love dry lakebed & empty dry lakebed & whatever follows regret in the dictionary dry… Read more →
Greg Fairbank (a slideshow)
State Change
I held a newborn yesterday; I rubbed his purple, downy skin with clean, white towels under the heat lamp until he cried and pinked up. Others came over then—doctors, nurses, and there were these medical students who didn’t know what to do with their hands. I elbowed all of them out of the way. I sang to the baby and… Read more →
For Someone Who Listens
The end comes many times, always in different disguises: effervescent plumes of sarcasm, barely veiled accusations, buttoned-up rancor. You fear the void beyond the mask. Its hunger for your porous bones. Its loneliness, playing you like a flute. It howls and you do too, you don’t know better. What it takes to quiet it down. Which voice is truly mine…. Read more →
Good Mother Manifesto
Good mothers wear tobacco pouchesfilled with lost teeth, dividetheir bodies into muffin tins, serve themselves for breakfast. Goodmothers even out wobbly table legswith their dream journals and pinky skin. They make afternoon teawith the children’s bathwater. Good mothers sayout loud, This is delicious. Good mothers stuffmagpie feathers in their ears, stuff magpie feathersin their children’s ears. Good mothers build cages… Read more →
Rooster
The motel hall is smoky. There’s music. Accordions. Guitars. A man sings in Spanish, about a country, a mistress. The end of the hall is quieter, but the noise behind the doors keeps me guessing: tangled bodies on a bed, a TV screen filled with gun fire, explosions, gavels, guilty verdicts. And there’s a woman screaming into a phone, demanding… Read more →
Nation
The kudzu vines have swallowed upthe county line signs.We have entered the nation of summer.At a roadside stand,an older woman, lovelyin a yellow shirt, snow white hairpulled back in a ponytail,flowers when she smiles.She opens and she closes,a simple act that is an older kind of language, howa beetle might explainour place among the stars.
The First Man To Fall Into The Sun
The first man to fall into the sunradioed back temperaturesand apologized for lost equipment.We gathered our possessions into a circleand posted a guard. The second man to fall into the suncried passages from Dantelive to an international audience.We looked up. We looked up at the sun.We killed the guard.We burned our possessions. Because the third man to fall into the… Read more →