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  • Safekeeping

      I stood on Mr. Silvia’s porch with my last thirty-six dollars rolled in a rubber band tucked between breast and belly fat.       I remembered the house from when I was a kid. Back then it was a gap-toothed barn where we played while birds flew in and out above us. Now it was a…

  • The White Hart Inn

    There was a storm— Nearly seven years ago— Julia and Lucas, living in California, they didn’t live together. She lived in her space, he in his. Lucas was finishing a degree at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, biding time; they were going to move to L.A. soon and get a place together. She was…

  • Extremadura

    I’m tired, spent, really, but don’t say much, lean toward the rookeries, spirulina days, effect trooperish refrains, undelinquent and pressed, not hardy but persistent still, in a fading way, feel dunked, put upon, dry-hearted often in face of grief, bear trouble poorly, issue bulletins to the Dept of the Interior requesting stays and clarifications, sent…

  • Spring Planting

    Today I plant sassafras and pickerel. Tomorrow, wild sarsaparilla and checkerberry. Will they take root here? The crows enter my yard. They remind me of ink slabs Chinese calligraphers used—not until mixed with water did their black ink breathe and broth. Each morning, goat hairbrush in hand, they sat near willows, against a dropping moon,…

  • Road to the Sea

      a novel excerpt It was a long road which he walked, and as it was the end of the dry season it was hot and dusty, and the heat rose from the orange laterite soil in simmered waves. Along the road to Boda there were palm trees and ebony and mango and papaya trees,…

  • The Book of Sleep (X)

    The field believes profusely in its weeds. Who are we to intervene? Each evening lasts for days. We play whist and euchre on the porch. We practice sleeping without closing our eyes. Season of bing cherries and stained teeth, of unfenced cows lowing along the highway. And the river like a long dream, erasing its…