That morning, a terrified phone call
from Nora right before I left for work at Apollo, our college town’s carpet cleaning service. Twelve-hour days in the Midwest drought summer of 1988, sucking up dirt from…
In the So-Called Open Sea
In my body it had grown, and then it slopped into a trough as the midwife heaved like bringing in a dory. I barely felt it pass, workhorse…
The Lesser Light of Dying Stars
It is believed that Mr. Leon Levitt of Peridot, Arizona, began to emit sometime around his forty-third birthday—“emit” being the retroactive clinical term ascribed by those of the science…
Constellation
We are anchored in the stars —Larry Dossey, MD Before I could grab nitrile gloves & drop the body in the garbage can a black triangle dive-bombed …
After Apple-Picking
—after Frost If it were five years ago I was dying, who would it have been who cared? That one boy I could count on to board the…
inheritance
idol adorned with eyelashes, fingernails, other half-alive things. teeth & psalm, bitten and bless, so much bone. a song, a jewel, to divine like omen — how to begin…
On a Scale of Nothing to All
Part of childhood remains buried under sandcastles. You used to poach grasshoppers with an old hairnet until it caught strands of cobwebs and would not let go. Memories are…