They were mostly kind.In the morning they drank coffeeand looked out the window. There were trees.Every morningthey rinsed their cupsand placed them in the sink for anyone to find.Their handswere nervous but busy.In the afternoon they worried what balls of claycould be made into smaller balls of clay.They clapped when they neededto clap. Every afternoon …
Wind licks the back of your ear-bone the blown back skin of your face You vaporize gasoline gleam your crystal blood glowing across your hand, your eye imploding in a powder-light the wind drinks clean with a tongue that was once yours, and as the shadow welts the sky as your marrow melts your brain …
I’m certain that morning I heard wasps droning beneath each floating, sunlit surface.The billowing high-peaked tents staked virgin space as if they were the early outposts of an empireon the rise. Here was a scene nothing in Chauceror Blake or my continental tours had prepared me for.How unlike the bored bewitchment I’d glimpsed in that …
after necklace sculptures by Mariko Kusumoto You, perfect but blank.A dress form, beige, standard.Until you erupt. Springtime underwater. Gauze tendrils, growth in radial symmetry.Paper lanterns inflate on your décolletage, gentle as mushrooms after rain.Though you are not lit up, you feel buoyant, worthy of silk and chiffon. Worthy of your seat on the train, your …
She is an insomniac, small and bumpy, with an iceberg foot and a peavey for a crutch. She used to live above me, she and her husband, a retired butcher who is very kind. One morning she came to my door to say Sorry about the thunder, you can see I broke my foot, can’t …
A man woke up in a burning building. He ran to the front door. It was jammed. Then he threw a chair through the window. It shattered and glass fell everywhere. He was careful as he climbed out of the window. It was a three-story building. A preacher was down at the bottom, waiting to …
Red knot, some mercury, some wax— detritus of one love or another. To fixthe darkness that comes not from nothing, from the swell of wings over light;full in flight the snow drifts, the flick of aperture trying for a photographof ambition—that drive we had to loop it all in: charcoal and vodka and dust.Is it …
The etymology of etymology is true meaning, but true meaning is not the true meaning of etymology.Your face is rarely on the surface, and your form, firmly polymorphous, declines, prim Proteus, to disclose the hourglass beneath your clothes.Cloistered in clauses, kneading dough your lord is absent to bestow,lady, you break the bread of speech under …
Mom snores on the flight, and we share a pairof earphones from Stuttgart to Lansing, listeningto the Armageddon soundtrack because it is, in fact, 1999, The End Times, or the end of something, Aerosmith helpsus to recognize it as such. We are anxious to exit the plane, to hug our dad, get our beagle out …
I thought the silver wire trees along the windowsillswere for aesthetic reasons A minimalist idea of a forest structure for yet-planted flowersnaïve as a patternnever intended to diverge Hello, pigeonHello, iridescent neck of the pigeon Even with a neck that changes hue at angles diffracts a purple glimmeras you tilt & ruffle in the light …