Lundi Gras at Commander’s Palace
for Billy, Nikki, Josey, Rosie, and Pearl We drink good whiskey under the magnolia trees, talk about how the dead can’t see how great life gets. What a…
European Stag Beetle
Because you swarm when the sky turns heavy, we call you thunderdoll and kill you to protect our thatch then we snap your heads and slip them in…
Anchor and Cave
Enslaved people’s quarters, Woodlawn Plantation, Virginia, 1820 We lay side by side in the heat, in the night’s palm, the dried sweat of day thick upon our chests,…
Death on the Other Hand
1. So many years of nightly death have made us practiced, professional. 2. Death on the other hand is scripted, sheep-worn, muzzy, and tastes bland as a tomb.…
You’ve Got to Be Good to People
Florian Davis was hit by a truck on Monday at 3 o’clock; she was just crossing Main Street. That’s what everyone said: “She was just crossing Main Street.” They…
Mastermind
It was the fall the NFL players went on strike, asking that their wage scale be calculated as a function of gross revenue—a demand the team owners recoiled from as…
Seventeen Things about My Friend Farzana
1. Farzana is even more beautiful than I remember. The girlish softness of her face has sharpened into angular maturity, as though someone reached under her skin and adjusted…
Editor’s Note
Definitions and usages of the word “time” as a noun take up two tightly printed, small-font columns in Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary. I’m not sure exactly when this…