Volume 8 Issue 1

Pretend

He’s bent in the bushes, under a Manchineel tree whose sap seeps into skin, burns internally, results in terrible blisters. His camera looks like a machine gun, its bipod buried in the sand, its muzzle towel-wrapped, like the man himself. I follow the trajectory of the lens’s gaze, but everyone at the hotel’s beach looks tiny and the same. Out… Read more →

Visibility, Forever

The water is always 72 degrees. We arrive in our bathing suits, ready to cleanse the sweat and dirt off our bodies. The only way to handle the cold shock is to take a flying leap from the edge and hope that the unavoidable gasp of surprise doesn’t flood our noses and throats with water. I jump – and feel… Read more →

Being Blind

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. – James Joyce, “Araby”   I was the boy who sat far from the lake with a sketchbook on his lap while the other kids swam and splashed and horsed around in the water. Sometimes, when the counselors… Read more →

In the Biblio

Of course, my timepiece was made out of scissors          and you cut the hands with still          more hands. You knew I was hankering for a pale rose or a nose-          gay to stitch along a minor work of Pliny*          at, say, dusk? Of course,… Read more →

The Tree Outside

How can you know you’ve survived? The hands still move, the feet, the heart though the mouth is frozen shut. I am taking the groceries out from the bag. I am putting the dishes Into the sink. I am sweeping under The table, and the tree outside, with its bare braches, sways gently in the wind. The children come in,… Read more →