I need to tell you + this is Maine. The woman prattling incessantly next to me + with a smoky New England cackle blotting out her husband John’s one-word encouragements,…

  +++ for Chen Chen A fathom used to mean the furthest distance a person could reach. A yawn—like chasm, chaos, or hiatus—is another name for space. Chiasma: inside the…

  • One of my dad’s favorite jokes starts like this: “I can’t believe they got back together after all that shit!” • Some nights he just left, and when…

    Like a curse, I am drawn to my bookshelf, to the title page of Motherless Brooklyn. Here, I find your name and number written in the left- hand…

Around fullness you barely knew from noon the late light falling in cinched with red southing shadows ++ along a yard ++ maybe mine in the hardening dim ++ a…

  +++ some women are born in flight a first flush summer in memory it seemed to have never rained you were warm like the walkways red under chinaberries swollen…

    Single white alienated female seeking a companion to stroll the dark night of her soul. Be advised, this is not a sexcapade. And aside from my knack for…

  The woodpecker that ran into my window is dead If only I knew taxidermy, I could bring it back to life Up close, each feather looks hand-carved, like the…

  At the estate sale, 70s porn fold-outs drape over the bedspread. When you’re dead, everything is laid out for sale, even your porn. The man running the sale tells…

  1. In the graphic novel the hero drives death the way a rancher drives livestock. Four-legged, voids pour from the hillsides—the shape, not the shadow, of extinction. 2a. +++++++…

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ always in my parents’ dream, no- +++++++++++ body is born daughter no powdery +++++ cheeks no white night, sighs and- ante no round- the-clock wishing I +++++++++++++ were married:…

  A womb sounds like a wound  in my mouth. A daughter portends losses. My mother  carried, in her womb, a wound without eyes. She grew up  with no mother,…