At six, I didn’t know more than riding a Schwinn and climbing banyan trees. “Do you believe in God?” the two blonde girls from four doors down askedas our bikes circled endlessly in figure eights around each other. Well, I suppose one girl asked while the other simply rode, silently and blonde.They weren’t twins, but …
•A hot dog in the park becomes a handgun I take two bites from, fire a round at a low-flying plane.•Mom bayonets the cake, chops the heads off candlesbefore I can find my tongue in the trash and make my wish.•One minute I squirt some children with a garden hose, the next I sniper foreheads, …
A neighbor’s flag flapping, its weathered cloth stretched on a gust, a pair of crows take flightaround an eastern pine, their game of tag and calls like laughter, a tiny riotwhenever the bluster dies down. Siren Doppler-effecting down the block, toddler tantrum settling to a nap, metal on metal of fabric gone slack—stars drapedacross stars, …
When an owl is hooting outside your bedroom window, do you leave your bed,strap on your head lamp, search the Douglas fir till you find it?Owl? Owl? I’ve been meaning to ask if owls fall in love, or is it something else. Hoot-n-love? Eat prey, love?My aloneness weighs less than the footprints of shrews. What’s …
The Russian sage is sprouting leaves from a brown stem dormant since November. Weeks ago, I pulled awaythe dead, unsure whether it was a perennial,all the while O’Hara insisting now the phone can be answered, nobody calling, only an echo / all can confess to be homeand waiting, which reminds me the eraof the landline …
Shaken, my friend tells me she’s spent her entire life inside the church’s walls, doesn’t know what to make of the movie that refuses to indulge a made-up god,says she hasn’t spent much time, until now, thinking about faiths outside her own. In the movie, rabbis bow in rapid succession, priests claim to takeon the …
and each one wants to describe it to me. its slippery metal.the intricate and pistol-hot pieces. the small and heavy bulletsthat slip into the barrel —snug. warm. trembling. touch it,one of the men might say, holding it in his cold broadhands. he might offer it to me, like a rose. like a fatdiamond ring. the …
Ignore the children laughing in the treesand the black cows staring into your mirror void. Focus on the sounds of the wounded animal trapped dying inside the walls of your body.You were made sensitive like a candle on a ledge, so a wolf was planted inside you. Its fangsare still blooming in the black earth …
Your pit of still wanting him— the width of a pin, but depths only the damned understand.Your body grew too soon, became a noose; obscenely swollen rope. He insisted youslipped your lips around histhroat. He dreamed each neighbor’s wife was an exit door.He wanted a more that you never were. Wanted any other her. And …
Getting older, you never got old.A gold mine of girl: doe-eyed, sold.In front of the shutter’s clicking, you did what he said, lens-fucking, muttering No hope for women.Piano to camera-ready, plucked at eighteen, barely steady, heavy with mood.Suddenly, you made scarce, laid low.Suddenly, a surprise: you arrivedagain, new world, sullen girls telling tales.Here’s what they …