I buy one scratch-off with my cigarettes every morning. I never win. That’s not the point. It’s the ritual. Something to keep my hands busy. “New scratchers in, ma’am,” says the clerk—his tag reads Hank, probably fake. He points to JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL! All glitter and guilt behind the glass. I haven’t seen the inside of a church since… Read more →
The mystery of growing pains is what hurts. If I felt growing pains, I didn’t know it. I can imagine what it feels like, the way I imagine it hurts when leaves fall or grow— a chemical reaction signaling discomfort, roots unsheathing themselves. There is so much that wants to grow, harden, parameters pushed to extremity. It’s like the word… Read more →
a slanted wish and its two-tongued answer. a misspelling of melted snow. morning runs in the cold, in shorts, in shrunken sneakers thumping pavement, the cysts are rattling inside me like loose change in a pocket. synonyms for decay : rot, wither, the wrong kind of quiet. the ghost of a grief so shape less it can hardly be grief… Read more →
I go to the bear store to get some work done on my bear. It’s down the street a bit from the horse store, but unfortunately bears have an excellent sense of smell. “Come on,” my bear says. “Horses! I just want to look, please?” I’m terrible at arguing with my bear, so off we go. Beside the horse store… Read more →
At dinner he told me how the Cornish tin miners ate with dirty hands pasties. The crust itself a calloused hand with one long knuckle a wife folded and crimped closed. In mines running under the sea, so many lamp-lit fathers unable to see beyond the lengths of their arms. They called the sound of cold tin creaking a cry.
A few notes on a misprinted poem by Laura Jensen What slips from me is what slips from me. Slippage is the hinge on which my life hinges. When the textemerges with a mark missing, I kiss it. The error ablates the face I was making when making it. Eros, a mistake. When I faced it, I lost it. When… Read more →
She had kept it in her hand, the firecracker, and it had gone off with a BANG so loud that everything—the screams, the adults’ questions after, the boombox music, everything in her head—went quiet. Just a little Black Cat, just a stick meant to spark and explode. They were all lighting firecrackers, all of the kids, past third base, with… Read more →
I see God in your crevices and craters: floating o shielding tender life from mercurial ocean waves. Blanket my sanctuary under the neutered sour of slick cream cheese. Yeast has never had a more perfect vessel. Rather than pontificating about empty calories, you are a proponent of HAES. My hedonist, you know better than anyone: there is no health without… Read more →
A golden shovel with thanks to Dylan Thomas There are whales bubble-feeding in the channel, but I won’t know until the sea splashes across the front page, humpback yawning like a bored schoolboy, a churn of eagles hovering above, each talon a blade. Where was I at when life was happening? Where were my children, their world presenting itself to… Read more →