if a house if a house on a hill near trees and lake if the lake, if trees if a house on the lake, brown, sullen, the overthrown river bloated in boats, treated to feed a water’s need in creation, if a house up the slope, stares down to edge agape if a house, if the lake so many mouths… Read more →
“Man,” I cried, “how ignorant art thou in thy pride and wisdom!” — Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Perhaps Shelley’s doctor had the right of it: lightening animates the dead, opening lungs to air, if such flow is signature of life. Inhale, and oxygen’s own desire to pair suggests a weaving, this thin trail of atoms recombinant not of self, but of… Read more →
upon waking: the in of it, the out of it bright streak of blood after the rain of newness, the newness of rain tell me how to speak in this silence I am learning a language of gesture [ ] [ ] [ ] hello cardinal on the greeting card chickadee on the fence this year I will be grateful… Read more →
Reclaiming, Re-envisioning, Rekeying District Six Much of my work in the series of the Quilted Chronicles revisits the history of reclamation, restoration and the landscape of freedom. In this case, the people, places and events of District Six, Cape Town, South Africa are of major significance and public memory. The interpretation of the events of District Six, the result of… Read more →
We were all afraid to get near until my sister poked him. He didn’t move, had somehow made it through the woods and fields in a blizzard to find our front porch. We used the shovel to scoop him and carried him inside, the flames low by then. Had we not burned the extra wood, he might never have woken,… Read more →
1 Here, a stove is luxury. An indoor toilet. A cup of clean water. 2 Elsewhere, black heart of the festering fruit. White grin of flies. Body hanging from a bridge. 3 Here, second hand shoes. Horse’s dry prepuce. 4 Elsewhere, dinner: fist of hair. 5 Elsewhere, head full of lice. Blow flies forcing the mouth to open.
For Christmas you give your father three hundred dollars to buy dentures. Toothless, he must now suck meat, juice it up with saliva, grind it with pinkish jaws till it’s ready for swallowing. He’ll go across the border, to Mexico, where it’s cheapest, but more dangerous. You tell him how young boys will follow him, begging to shine his shoes…. Read more →
For Sylvia Plath, on the 50th Anniversary of her death Your imagination springs its jaw on me like a rat trap, snare snapped at the neck, tiny metal teeth leaving a row of scars, and I a smiling woman, seeking to loot your treasures, sea of adjectives in a dark, cold mud bath of declarative muck, oh, little bloody mouths, oh,… Read more →
I’m the blurred settler, second wife to a sequined dress. She was best friend with a rolling gait whose laughter spread across beach and basement club. Will she recede, smoke into blue and white? Sew her frock into a pillow and stuff. Throw by the corkscrew willow then summon the rain. Weave what’s left into my garden fence. Later, I’ll… Read more →
or stop, or stop and start over or start over and start as you mean to go on it takes a nation of millions not growing old at night, it takes deliveries delivered langauge, you dial the number, or you dial the number and your voice says seas are calm, skies bright no flames, or nowhere there’s smoke there’s fire,… Read more →