A country lying wide open. A country oriented in the original way, toward God. It is like this: all of it, a prosthetic sadness. Wanting to say the thing with bare hands. Morning, held me in her teeth.Morning, her mouth sown with light. Woman, I find myself recounting what I am owed. Woman, I find …
Not the storm, but moments before: I breathed into your shoulder, the sore part of your arm. At the shore, you read me the essay you wrote,the one about me. In it, we fuck, but only I come. Any edits, you asked? Only one. We sat in abandoned tires, thinking. The moon lip-synched across the …
for NatalieEver since I met you I’ve been fighting the urge to apologize.My fingers are, sometimes, stupid, and I’m often overzealous, words bursting like flares in uncertain skies, notes frenzying the felt innards of pianos. The sandalwood scent, the sidelong glance of a foot lamp, the careful work of your kidneys as they sort what’s …
after Alfred HitchcockSomething about the lure of the moon, the black-and-white gloom of futon and Turner Classic Movies, the sub-suming chug of the train pulls me to you, you campy Raskolnikov, you backlit chatterbox, criss-crossed legs and double scotch perched on Promethean overreach. You muse, dearBruno, on the perfect murder, the ol’ switcheroo, the you …
The black hole whirlpool van Gogh paintedover Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Its violent winds,its quiet heart.O my soul, out the asylum window wheels in wheels roll by themselves, you carnivorous birds.Sky a pinwheel at a child’s memorial. O my soul, I am close. This nightI may be required of you.
Rudolf Steiner, nineteenth-century “spiritual scientist,” theorized that human development unfolds in cycles of seven. He mapped humanity this way, in neat piles of seven, as well as the physical, mental, and emotional milestones he believed the average person meets as they move through these cycles. From birth to age seven, we develop the will to …
“I Ran (So Far Away),” A Flock of Seagulls I used to run to this song. I was fifteen with lush blond hair and newly sprung boobs and found it hilarious to hit the pavement at the same tempo as its iconic chorus. I’d run through the neighborhood where I’d grown up, hoping someone I …
I run from the house, pushing the dusty screen from its window frame and sliding my body down the stucco side. I am seven when I run, my fingertips soiled by the escape, my palms and little-girl thighs scratched by the rough wall, the resistance, the dirt upon impact. This is the first time I …
They were younger than I, but it didn’t matter that much. We had all stopped growing up. There was a pair of them in a two-room apartment over my head. At first, their clomping around and the like had driven me crazy, but nothing made them quit, so eventually I joined them. They had ragtag …
“My roommate’s in Nebraska, but you can’t tell anyone.” This was the most serious I’d seen Alex. His voice a whisper, his words hardly breathed into my jaw. Eve must have been in real shit. “What’s she doing there?” We were glued together in his twin bed. We’d decided to spend spring break in his …