Describing her, I say, she’s a Modigliani face-wise but when she walks in her custom-size narrow boots she minces, or half-dances like a pony, the sort of pony who is dear and a little silly and wears a hat with a ribbon. A little of this and a little of that—lacking a territorial integrity, she…
By wings whose shapes are but half a heart? Feathers oiled with country clubs and gasps of delight? Not for these the sandhill crane shakes her beaded voice. Gauche and gangrene, she is the gatekeeper of gibe, a cement-gray song edged and pocked in grassy fields, a frock of scarlet over her eye, her own…
I flick a switch—out flashes the light bulb, like God snapping his fingers in my face: Wake up, Pumpkinhead. I’ve been running around half-naked, with the rest of America, wearing only a credit card and a cashmere scarf. Arf, arf. Yesterday, I went to Circuit City’s going-out-of-business sale to revel in the fall of capitalism,…
Even the gods misuse the unfolding blue. Even the gods misread the windflower’s nod toward sunlight as consent to consume. Flesh of their flesh, bone of their bone. Still, you envy the horse that draws their chariot. The wilting mash of air alone keeps you from scaling Olympus with gifts of dead or dying things…
Thierry I am here because it’s too crowded on the other side of this sentence. Take this page—where do I place myself? At the beginning or the end, or in the middle? Or maybe in the corner. I can’t be everywhere, that’s what I’ve been told my entire life. They say we have a choice,…
At the airport the conveyor bears small yachts shaped like luggage into the distance, and I am headed, when they let me pass through the X-ray arch, toward home. There is a distance sometimes greater than this between us, since you are in another state—gaseous, solid, liquid, light—and I admit I am often absent lately…
I shall speak of the tendency among sane and healthy persons to see images flash unaccountably into existence. —Francis Galton This is a tale not of science but of blue. Some say this heat is the worst in history, but history is huge and I doubt it has never been hotter across the Northern…
My mom says my dad had to work so hard he didn’t really notice how angry it made him. Nowadays he can’t watch the news without losing his temper. He comes from country people who hated the government going all the way back to the revolution. My mom says my dad’s grandfather used to talk…
Sadie’s lover, Marcus, called her every Thursday from Chicago as he drove to and from marriage counseling. (His wife drove separately, it goes without saying.) The end result of this was that it felt as if the three of them were in counseling together, but Sadie sort of liked that. The reason Marcus had to…
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