Article

  • Anniversary

    at your marker (they call it a marker) a footstone hipper than headstones           earlier mapquest led to metro north           google to the most reliable cab service in peekskill I bring wheat      tall dry half-live stalks           bought the day before           (new york has everything)           no one questions the harvest shooting from…

  • The Leopard

    She feels the shape of another animal three trees ahead, & raises her left front paw. Dew trembles on each blade of grass as a snake uncoils among the leaves. She’s a goddess in a world mastered by repetition & unearthly cadence, pacing off light hidden in darkness. She eases down her right paw, slow…

  • The Red Balloon

    No one knows where it came from. Some say a long black car pulled up to the gas station and from it stepped a black-haired, black-eyed man in a black suit, who coughed once into his fist and then gripped the pump and muddied it with his phlegm. Others say that late one night—for a…

  • The Tip

    That he left it behind when he left. That it has three teeth. That it might be the horny snout-end of a defunct dragon. That I remember him, early on, putting it in and turning it when it           broke off. That he looked at me and said, Uh-oh. She doesn’t want us to get…

  • To a Braying Donkey

    In this thin air, your voice carries for a quarter mile, grating like a train, and I relearn the ancient lesson—epic sadness travels. Your braying turns everything tragic. The face I shave: crossroads of dolor. The bed I make: labor in lostness. The scrambled eggs at the end of my fork: another bite of a…

  • The Prettiest Girls

    When I met her, I had the kind of job people always think they want until they try it for a few weeks. I was working as a production supervisor for a studio that made a lot of profitable, mediocre movies, and one of my responsibilities was to find locations where other movie people would…

  • Ode to Your Eyebrows

    They are, my love, a cross between Einstein’s and wheat fields. Twin mustaches. Strands of sugar right before the cotton candy is spun. Astroturf welcome mats. The cellophane grass of Easter baskets. Caterpillar chia pets. Brambles and squiggles. Seaweed strewn on shore. Spiky cloud tufts that lift up when I show you my slip or…

  • Agitation: Wake

    morning dropped a gentler rain after wine and gin encasing the unseen    unmentionable    as clouds deftly encase wasps-in-a-shroud    and stay aloft    without a string unmentionable    even after headstrong long-gone spins of wind (go go little gallop of smoke    lithe cantering steam come come wild unthreadings    anything not to envision his fingers pressed against…

  • The Road to Hell

    For a long time, walking it,           we sang Woody Guthrie songs, This land is your land, this land is my land,           and got along with whoever came our way, although, to be honest,           few came back and those who did had downcast eyes,           a sort of sad sack hangdog look to…