We could road trip to Tennessee from New Mexicothe kids & I we could be brave they think I’m bravewe could unroll our bags & throw our chanclas in the grasswe could barefoot it we could unlearn the constellations& learn them again unhitch their stories from their nameslike the names I’ve taken into my belly …
Compact Jazz recording, 1989Nina Simone, accompanying herself on piano Every instant is at once a giver and a plunderer.—Gaston Bachelard In 1980, my mother lay dying. Her death that July guided me north to a high Victorian mansion in upstate New York and, within just three days, to my beloved. He too was mourning—his marriage …
Would you make love to me if I had two heads?I promise it’ll be fun, a two-for-the-price-of-one big-box-department-store-weekly-special:Just add water! And my extra head magically sprouts out of my neck, birthing quicker than the Chia PetI was dying to bring home back in the nineties, with a grocery cart full and checkout-stand tabloids and scandaland …
I needed money after the move. That was my excuse. But really I couldn’t bear to live in another house with it, knowing it was in the side table, in the drawer above my vibrator. Unfired for years—so much potential. The inheritance came with a small box of bullets, the cardboard foxed but nearly full, …