A man wearing one green plastic glove knits under an aura of leaves, his legs levered on the trunk. Sunlight on whitewashed brick, the cloud of leaves floats in place over the mimosa’s myriad stems. A helicopter harnesses its hive above us, jaw blank as a catfish mug, silver and eyeless from underneath, the slender …
III If returning means September’s grayed-down mood is still a long swim to your father’s crab pots, I’ve overheard it in an airport. If cruelty starts off small and tells a joke something like love, I’ve sensed childhood one state line after another. And if I listen close enough to the hard place sworn against, …
Artist’s Statement I am interested in how our unconscious manifests in waking life. I am currently developing a body of work that explores the figures and places encountered in my dreams, to give them a visual presence. I work from observation, often recreating elements of my dreams through set building in my studio. I also …
only ever see once, which is to say I love youwith an eagerness that belies my time. At the park yesterday, a girl lost her grip on her golden retrieverand the big old thing ran straight over to meas if some god had so compelled it to. In the grassbeneath those shade trees, I felt …
By saying things like, We’ll get going, or Did you expect such hot days ahead, or I forgot that you would be here,I was meaning to call. Language is a loose skin thrown over who you love.And when they leave, you get to choose. The I could be no one.The you could be no one—say: …
I OEDIPUS sweltered on a Hersheypark bench in late July, parched, pink with skin-fire, heat index 109˚F and climbing, the rush like a nightmare stampede of ghosts, there in the air impossible to touch, a thousand thousand squeals, whoosh-clink of coasters, crinkly bags and slurps of passersby, tears, somewhere tears, flip-flops splatting as a faded …
You are with me in the McDonald’s this time, and I am still the saddestperson here. Your gazea hard line at the far wall.I can feel it gatherin you like a blood clot,a cyclone—first chill of storm, first gust dragging rain through the street. How quietyou get when I am quiet, how soon your hand …
I would wonder over it often: the welt on my teacher’s throat. My hand cupped round the neck of my cello, hollowI hugged to me. So thin the musicstand, so thin what kept the din of strings from the electric weatherof my blood. In profile my teacher’s tucked hair, frown, perpetual bruise. Horsehair on metal, …
after Erin SlaughterThere are times I tried water, thought of holding youjust above me a pail, tipping.Times I tried not to beall fire and wind, all empty waiting for smother.I could not make you a mountain pass,the fall sunset hours I tried to find the window, the offerdwindlingsafety to another world.Always I thoughtI can’t have …
I’ve been having dreams where everything turns out __________or nothing ends at all no one not carried back to the world of the living nohypnic jump like I’ve missed a stairstep like I’m certain something has gone terribly wrong where you areour books and stories always tell us not to want danger to beware the …