All the losses we never knew we had clamber up our rib cages, sure- footed as only grief can be. We stretch out adolescent bodies on swings in the park, humid nights growing black around our movements, arms loosely holding onto the chains as we fly toward becoming someone else, adults we won’t recognize in…
Midnight owled past on a cloud drift, snowploughed high, never rumbled to let me know. No text no call no hoot. It is the weather they say. It dampens the transmissions, makes them crash to the powdered shroudfields lost among flakes. After, I wait at the window, my face an aldis lamp of random messages…
angels speak from my open wound where the light leaks out and the blossoms in my mouth cut my tongue the way needles bled my skin for art. the dregs in the teapot remind me of every twist behind the praise and so I down the lot, flicking my tongue to catch every gritty bit.…
He’s the one they want. His name attracts talent and interest. He’ll show up with that guitar, hardly say two words, listen to the track, skim the chart. Then he’ll plug in, adjust levels and play the absolute correct thing. First time through: perfect. But then he’ll go back and find some way to make…
>1 Sure, she wears men’s trousers, but that’s not all she does You make me want to say that while doing dangerous performance art Decrying the existence of men You make me want to wear carabiners and get a social work license You make me want to look at my large wristwatch and say…
The world is filled with accidental pinhole cameras cracks in doorways holes in fences points where light is channeled, flipped, and abused to confuse our secrets with our proclamations. We live in these pictures illuminated by undetected images. Entire other lives developing, shining around our corners, the light I use to read your mood. A…
Miriam made eggs when I asked for eggs. “To make you feel healthier,” she said. Miriam cleaned the house when I asked her to clean the house. “To make you feel healthier.” Miriam sewed buttons and hemmed pants when I asked her. “To make you feel healthier.” Miriam drove me to work and played music…
On one of those late-autumn nights when the cold had cleared the air but the storms hadn’t yet begun spilling over the serrated rim of the Sierra Nevada, a star flared up in the evening sky, gathering such intensity that my neighbors in the Sierra Shadows trailer park stepped from their wheeled domiciles to gaze…
An accident at first, her husband gone to work, her stranded sans remote atop the treadmill, two miles still to run. And so, she watches. The volume low, she notes how still it blares; above, a comedy reel the feed below: The snow will turn to ice by morning. Senator ready to deal. And on…
I walked around the thrift store like it was a museum. Looking at the details of yesterday one footstool at a time. I passed the posters of World War II era, the ones in which Uncle Sam points at me. The leisure suits as brown as new spring dirt. I found albums that completed someone’s…