Where there was a meadow,a shore. Wouldn’t that be beautiful, he thought—to return by sea, which of course implies leaving, or a kind of reliefif we can allow it. And it’s true, the beginning of a painting may also bethe beginning of a room. How we followed the canvas toward a door and there was …
From a Folgers can onto a cold acre Of Vinton County regrowth my uncleScattered his dad. He claimed a sprinkle, An errant paternal flake, had takenTo wind then found the slot between his Stroh’s And his throat as he swigged a farewell toast.That beer, he said, was smokier than most. Must’ve tasted sweet enough, too, …
The M’s have given up the ghost of baseball present. They are shooting for three seasons from now (an arrow, it turns out, does not go where it is pointed (most days, now that we’ve settled, I pull your legs over mine on the couch, kitchen clock sprung forward, kids turned down past the heat …
Your father and I share names (government names)(I hope he’s well)(I hope you’re well)(You and I both always kept to the shadows but shined in the presence of prophecy)(Vroom Vroom)(T-tops off )(Quaker Street chasin’)( Johnny in the front)(I’m knee to chest behind the driver’s seat) (Peter tucked next to me)(The bass)(That fucking bass)(Rattling the inside …
Somewhere . . . Someone remembers it was the day we visited your mom at work. The old Montford unit. I’ve driven pass that sonuva’ bitch everyday ¡chingao! twice a day for twenty-plus seasons while the burnt sky arched flat, bright with angry love, and I never told y’all que tenía familia . . . …
Associate Editor Andy Sia: Candid and contemplative, Naa Asheley Ashitey’s diaristic piece explores the contours of desire and intimacy following violence. Ashitey does not only turn to the diary but also reimagines the form, professing a desire for a kind of intimacy, and additionally, a language capable of holding this desire. The process of healing, …
You can’t blame the hounded pangolinfor coiling into herself. Stubborn artichoke crossed with a stout shop-vac, the animal seems engineered for battles epic, wretched. Instead, she defaults to pure defense—no teeth, just a spiral of bronze scales, as if roofers shingled a dreamy cat with scallop shells.The pangolin asks only solitary midnight suckling,a topsoil seething …
(Robert Louis Stevenson, “Where Go the Boats?”) Gray green is the river At the end of the world So I misremember What once I heardIn the Garden of Verses The lamps have been litThe blessings and the curses And all I cannot writeAll I cannot write Remains in the song The lamps I cannot lightAnd …
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, …