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 …
after (and with a phrase from) Tara Bray’s “Memoir”Once, I watched my dad kill a hen we’d reared for years; watched my brother carry its small limp body. Why?I cried. Her neck is bleeding now. Everyone laughed.I refused to eat its meat. I could not fathom the betrayal.A friend at school loved his sheep so …
Great wheel pushing the river behind it Under it the unattractive paddle cat Not many left they say who’d knowso opaque with every state’s topsoil even the water is feeling its way Missouri Mississippi mingling esses You put in a verb just to let off steam They make fun of how you say calliope
Sound effects are a parallel life made of common materials wood blocks for hooves et cetera I hear thunder above a prairieI know to be shaken aluminum I know there is a horse under it not needing to be fed or broken