For Whom Does This Come
careening the marbled mind down mathematical koans: What is the sound of 18 million miles clapping 82,818,537 kilometers away? Sunset compresses far below our feet, first lights of the Bay Bridge create a silver river below, my daughter’s hair trails uncombed. She grumbled her way up the hill and now she’s a conduit of wonder and light. We witness this… Read more →
Reasons I Refuse to Cut My Hair
(cont.) 156. It’s an all-natural people repellant. Not only am I a six-foot-six gorilla wearing size sixteen shoes, but also my mohawk is longer than just about anybody’s hair. So, even at my day job where I’ve worked with the public for over a decade, people have become this much more reluctant to approach me. For a time, I… Read more →
The Broom
After Jose Hernandez Diaz After my first psychotic episode, I turned into a common house broom. My long, sturdy handle was made of previously loved wood, and sleeked into a bunch of fastened blonde crunchy yet pliable corn husks. I swept the floors of all my neighbors, gathering up their stories, memories, worries, and hopes, then reduced them into neat… Read more →
Outlook
“The chickens are always in twos,” my 16-year-old says, watching our laying hens grub with clawed toes, then peer at the ground, tilting their heads for a close look, just outside our kitchen window. (I think) my daughter is distracting herself from the homework on the counter in front of her. School is often miserable for both of us, a… Read more →
The Comments Section at Whitehouse.gov
If I didn’t know the words molten and crag how could I refer to the world beyond my line of sight? Breadcrumbs and visions fall from my chapped lips: great buildings leaning against one another for support, lakes draining, flaming comets crisscrossing smoke trails above, dinosaurs returning just as the first stars note their absence. Another day greeting my neighbors… Read more →
The Holiday
Seth watches me shiver and hug myself, sliding my fingers over shoulders and forearms. “It was real right?” I ask. “Yes” he answers. I’m wearing a hospital gown, hair up in a horrible bun, pale-skinned, suicidal—or so I said. The nurse checks my pulse for the second time. A breakfast tray sits on a stainless-steel surface near my bed surrounded… Read more →
Self-Portrait as Gertrude Stein’s Counselee
Here she is now, all notepad and ears, Telling me a thought is a thought is a thought Is not a rose. Is not love, loss, or identity. I want to say: Rose is the colour of everything rose-coloured. I’m thinking: it can’t hurt, it’s only a dream. Mouth corner rising, she makes a note. Something in me takes up… Read more →
Locus Pocus
Pink swamp beyond, claw me down to unstitch itches, full of opal emeralds and intact eyelids. Cold machine I cradle, please release the needle, poor tapered worm we are. In and unearthed. Slander the ragged remainder—good folk are fine, but a closed corpse can’t be crawled into. From below holler our apologizers, as I could reach out and take their… Read more →
Therapists say the OCD is my friend
And true enough, sometimes I imagine spiders with a longing unbecoming of an arachnophobe: Wrest eight knuckled legs from nothing weave ten fingers over my eyes stealing looks amidst primal shudders. What a dirty thrill. What a thing to write home about this existing in a calamitous light. It is as if, you say, you want to die. This, after… Read more →