“Volume 8 Issue 4”

Final Arrangements

1. Call Dr. Wang’s office and ask for Carol. Insist that Maxine be seen today. Do not be browbeaten. My address book is on the hall table. You have to look up the meaning of browbeaten before the implied insult sinks in. To avoid a conflict you’re not prepared to win, you proceed to number 2. 2. Cancel the paper…. Read more →

Pupa

I In exactly 1 week I will be someone else. My head will fall off, or rather, I will shed it, or more precisely the warmth from inside a casing of spun silk will liquefy it into running formations of bubbling amber. For a brief time I will look like a melting candle. I’ve known this since the age of… Read more →

Two Separate Planets

An apparition bloomed in my throat when I saw him pull up in his rental car. For three years he’d lived somewhere in the Amazon. Jungle-vined legs subdivided and twisted out of the Honda. Even his bones moved like sunsets I’d never seen. This wiry, tan strangeness with eyes lit by other mountain ranges leaned his full wildness down into… Read more →

The Fields around Our Apartment

bustling with bombs, with Bond girls,             with balmy weather. Fawns   stayed very still, immovable even from fright,             and their mothers taught them never to stray   into the road. We sat perched on chairs, binoculars in hand,             spying their spots, nestled next to land mines.   In the bathtub, I peel lengths of skin from my… Read more →