Looming over the little sewing kit and the miniature bottles of shampoo and conditioner, I am a giant— a king standing before the royal mirror in an enormous robe of terrycloth. As a sign of my benevolence, I will forego coffee from room service and check out early before my tiny subjects arrive to wash…
for lunch he made her sweet peas with milk and butter her favorite— and after school he taught her lessons in French kissing until the grandmother caught her snuggled in his lap fingering combat ribbons and stripes the smell of aftershave and tobacco safe and after all what did she know when she was pulled…
Like a voice drifting across low damp ground it is always there. I have whole files on the subject. There is nothing more to know. My name hangs like a sign outside an old inn, a painted figure for illiterates, blown to and fro. Last night I had a dream of finally…
Pascagoula, Mississippi Do Not Enter the green stucco school, cyclone fence studded with debris and memorial wreaths, monkey bars shadowing blacktop where hopscotch, four square still scrawl yellow. Do Not Touch the dodge ball under the crepe myrtle tree or the waterline ringing the building, boarded windows eyes shut tight against the flood. Do Not…
At dark, I make a homesick says a Japanese exchange student in my wife’s ESL class, writing how much he misses his family, his girlfriend, a certain café in Kyoto. I suggest tutoring. But that night, it feels strangely fitting after our second bottle of wine to cap the red pen bleeding cursive from her…
In tennis shoes whitened with toothpaste Running next to a hoop steered with a stick From the hill down the footpaths of Aptekarka park I’d like to see myself today Through your boy’s eyes. Our shared shame Under the duckweed of still ponds. Above them, in that past now, the rusty sun. Which of us…
“If ever, oh ever a Wiz there was, The Wizard of Oz is one because—double-time!— because-because-because!” Mania does liven up a song. We detoured for candy cigarettes. My old pastime— I smoked; he sang the entire score. Dad was well, so he got visitation. It had been—I’d lost track of time— a year? He launched…
Pulling out government coupons for the first time In a Krogers twelve blocks from her walk up So the bagboys and cashiers and seniors Browsing tabloids would all be strangers, She’s slow motion through and past their stares. She feels every nuance of her body As a tense repressed trembling, a calculated Conscious stepping, just…
Think of a lizard as a spot of day-glo green, insect-sized, though in all ways perfect. Lost in this kitchen of chrome-souled recipes for oblivion, he looks hard at me. His skin, my skin, our heartbeats tight with trauma, I carry him out where, tack-sharp, two green push-ups, and a cool survey of the universe,…
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