The smell of scattered mothballs as the cottage doors rattled open year after faithful year. There was the sweet rot of paperbacks stretching their spines. Here, men and boys didn’t wear socks with their trousers, and the women talked in whispers scrutinizing newcomers over gin and tonics, straightening their stiff cotton skirts with a propriety…
A flock of pink flamingos moved in across the street, and set up plastic people on the lawn. They’ve faced them out this way, hands molded to their chins, looking more like us as night comes on. Downtown, the waitresses are starving in their aprons; the watchmen get fainter by the hour. It’s…
Altadena-summer mustard smog sun all yellow as I have become this year I fear I am fat and wear a t-shirt when swimming childish the T-shirt clinging to me through summer the gut of August summers before when I was born smack for air this year the smack of water as I…
At first, it is a tiny flap of skin no bigger than a fingernail, like a mole or a birthmark but with more substance. I find it when I’m in the bath, the water cooling around me and my father’s razor floating across the surface, reminding me of his presence below the window in the…
Muddy my love, love, lick my face with your black boots, shudder my heart’s tick with your own talking hands, explain without words what you see when you see me senseless + overawed, joint-achingly jangled in a love made of nets made of almost-but-not-quite-forgotten-melodies made from the nectar of a fruit never named or harvested…
Darling, my daddy’s razor strap is in my hands, & there’s a soapy cloud on my face. I’m a man of my word. Didn’t I say, If Obama’s elected, I’ll shave off this damn beard that goes back to ’68, to Chicago? I know, I also said I’d kiss the devil, but first let…
Cootie Munster’s sister is scared of spiders, Jack says, and then Charlie says we should put some down her pants.“We could get those big ones,” he says, “like that came out of the jungle in the movie yesterday.” Kansas City is hot in July and we are sitting in our clubhouse—The Roscoe Turner Flying Corps—which…
for Big Kenny, Little Kenny, and Joel3 Let us define a topology on the emotion L by declaring a sub-love L1, {Father, Son} to be an open love if and only if it either contains the open mouth kiss, Ø, or contains a series of emotional sequences L(f, s), where L(f, s) = hands open…
I was a fine altar boy, yes. They say I was also angelic, whatever it means this side of hell. My heroes have blood on their hands, & they all look exactly like me. A good suit. A tilt of the hat. A perfect, practiced smile. A white handkerchief in my breast pocket. Shoes polished…
No products in the cart.