I suppose I can be forgiven for believing my brain might kill me, for failing to fulfill the prophecyof potential. Even with the shabby gifts of a scalpel and a torch. I know, you want the signpost ofbright plumage. You want to know who gets the beach house. Who gets stuck with the cat. Whatabout …
My father died while I wept on his lap. We didn’t much care for each other at that point, but still, he stroked the back of my head. That same year in the late summer an eerie series of freezing rains were followed by eight inches of ice pellets in Mora County. The whole valley …
Inside, late afternoon sun passingthrough the window, I followa circle of light that darts on the ceilingwhen I move my arm, my watch’s glassits origin. When I hold my arm still,my dead son comes to light,as if each one of my days still livesat a distance, but a distancethat can be traveled at the speed …
I come from a line of people intimate with the dead, my mother taking my hand when I was a boy and placing it on the face of my dead great-grandmother, first her forehead, then her cheeks. My mother said my body would keep the touch of her body. I repeated what she had taught …
(“Ode on a Grecian Urn,” John Keats)a. First course, salad: Breast, Butterfly, Being.Dessert, tautology explosion where Energy equals Lightspeed²x a body. (See physicist toe asphalt in megaton shoesasking if blast photo equals cold pastoral.) Language school.b. If Truth is the egg, is Beauty a chicken? Being mostly speechless,the Urn doesn’t ask how taut must be …
Because bombed-out citieson what was the Silk Road can neverbring back their dead,people felt it necessary to testfirst by launchinginto orbit a smallbrindled dog.Who were the scientistswho trained her, implantedelectrodes in her opened skin,and kissed her nose beforethey sealed her in?They recorded her heartexploding into two hundred and fortybeats a minute,in a metal capsule so …
Like the fetus looking inits grainy aquarium likea haunted gummy bear orthe rubber squeeze doll PanicPete, you don’t technicallyexist, but I think about you a lot.How much you mean to meand how weird it is that if you aresomehow not in mint condition,I’d be sad. So what if you’ve housedthe lisping symphony of burstsproduced by …
Marigold, Tagetes erecta, la caléndula, cempohualxochitl Unless I’d picked so many,greedy against disasterthe afternoon before the hurricane,I wouldn’t have knowneven after this long: your scentis multiple, not only the sharp warningof brushed-past leaves but a profound,encompassing sweetness belongingto petals only and softerthan I’d have thought,flower to fill the palm,flower held close over centuriesbefore you were …
“The old will die, and the young will forget.” CHARACTERS: BONNIE: Mom. American woman. JAMIL: Dad. Middle Eastern man. DEMA: Daughter. Half. Thirteen years old. NOOR: Daughter. Half. Ten years old. GAIL: Next-door neighbor. MARK: Gail’s husband. ACTOR: A man, a prophet. Supernatural, unrelenting, paranormal, transcendent, and psychic. Note: / indicates an overlap with the …
Maybe a skylight above this hospital bed? I could watch the moonrise and wish I did more of that sort of passive reckoning with the three kids, arriving mutually at our sacred nothingness. We’re always going, one thing to the next, mincing hours into minutes, minutes into seconds; if I sketched the effect, it’d be …