Article

  • ὁδός [hodos]

    Greek. 1. A traveled way; a road. 2. A traveler’s way; journey. The idea of a woman as a road has a certain appeal: I think of setting off along myself, boots sucking softly at the mud. The Greeks imagined the uterus hiking up and down. The booted empty uterus, sniffing for blood. And the…

  • Gondwana

    I was on the bus, on my way to see Dad, trying to distract myself by looking at all the cruddy people and their misery, but it was a total no go, I couldn’t concentrate; and then I was standing there in front of him saying (just like I’d rehearsed), I’m really sorry to interrupt…

  • Gut-Bomb

    What separates four pounds of ground chuck elk from four pounds of ground chuck beef is two spoonfuls of black pepper, parsley, and seasoned salt. Source: the group home cookbook. When the game warden dragged a bull off the autumn highway or hauled a warm-bellied cow some poacher left to rot, he phoned us. I…

  • The Dark Constellations

    The Inca gave the lightless places names. Fox, toad, serpent. A black llama with faint eyes. The space between my hands and the keyboard. I have forgotten how     the sonata begins. Photo printed in black and white, so that the wine looks clear. The mirror in a dark room, waiting for monsters. In the city sky,…

  • Often, Common, Some, and Free

    Dear, neither of us has anymoney. Let’s saywe leave that field open, as inwe don’t complete the form. I see nothing heresays it is required.Maybe this is the other kindof field. Grass, etc. That makes sense to me.Dear, neither of us has anymoney. Let’s saythere’s an Adirondack chair, the affordable plastic kind.Maybe those are rubber.Maybe…

  • Piece by Piece

    1.          Construction When the road was not a road but a flooded mouth of broken teeth husband and wife parked at the spring-swollen dam. Above a chorus of peepers they bickered the radio news unloading their haul: soft pine, tongue, groove. They shouldered the wood under a catchpenny moon. A quarter mile down they filled…

  • Sing to Me

    Chipped ivory, wire into the wall, a hole for headphones— This piano came from that one, the first piano, a dark wooden body we sheltered in, a father broad as an ark. I could float alone in it, go back and forth, E-flat, E, and slip between tipped sky and dirty penny taste in the…

  • (why your room has a door)

    It’s not the shore; it’s the ocean that opens. Devil, make a mountain of me for the water to dwell         against. I became aware of my      methods and the methods changed me. Soldier, you make my body a map on the floor. It’s what the door is for—         hesitation—a hand that wants to be a mouth…