The Tape-Recorder
When my brain was a mass of static, I wanted a disembodied hand to creep through the door and cast its filmy glow across the walls of the attic…
To Swallow the River that Spews from the Mouth
Someone hid the fountain in a corner of their backyard, covered it with junk, but I could see it, through the chain-link fence, though not at first—when I was…
Conference Apocalypse
I'd like to welcome everyone to the last session of the last day. Thanks for being here. Thanks for sticking around until the end. We're probably all going to…
Triptych: To the People I Never Hit Drunk-Driving
I. I hope you have lived long and well. I hope you never again fear a swerving car, head- lights off like a box turtle’s neck protected inside an…
Fresh Flowers
I was walking in a forest when I found a book of prose poems by Charles Baudelaire floating in a calm creek. I knelt into the shallow water and…
Flamingo heights
these tiny moments often get away from me, flapping their wings, somehow related to dad driving over the mail box, yelling about killing himself, or neatly arranging his paints…
My Idle Body
it might be possible to take up a pencil —Donald Hall, “Without” It might be possible to take up a pencil without waiting for a good Muse-wrassle. To grab…
To my mother, as she ages,
Give me the finger you burnt while making us toast. Give me your sunken eyes in the morning, and the worn soles of your feet at night. Give me…
The Architecture We Were Born Into
—in “Latino,” by Leticia Hernández-Linares Portuguese was one of the seven deadly jubilations, kept close at hand, away from, the morcela made in hiding as meu pai loaded the…