Here where I have driven past a thousand times, here off the two-lane blacktop, the tattered blanket of April tries to warm the icy lies and whys of what lies a few feet beneath the surface of what we know. A loud, yellow backhoe and several diggers delve into the hardened breasts of our mother…
I understand women the way junkies understand shooting up. Feel the rush, make the pain go away, and think about the next fix. I don’t know what to do when the glow wears off, when a real person floats to the surface of the dream. It’s the sixties, after all, and what might be pathology…
My grandmother’s laughter was an exploding plate, the kind that the traveling salesman said would never break, and he’d fling it against the kitchen floor just to prove his point, and the plate would spin making a kind of high-pitched whine. My grandmother’s laughter was like that, too; almost soundless, like it was running out…
The long-tailed mouse that gnawed a hemisphere into my box of ginger snaps, the dust-gray mouse whose dung speckled the kitchen floor and countertop, the mold-puff mouse whose claws roamed through paper garbage bags, creaking crumpled cellophane, the pointy-nosed mouse with nostrils trembling, the defenseless-eyed mouse, cute and sad-eyed, shocked by sudden light, the chomping,…
We shelter best that which destroys us. Language. Speaking to the other is like this: standing on a small raft; baskets of apples to balance it; a murder of crows downstream. There are no maps of the waters that cross through this house. A shut door does no good. Even pots with lids…
The king is murdered and his daughter, Mis, goes mad, growing fur and killer claws, escaping into the woods. She is tamed by Dubh Ruis, a harp player. Marrying her, he becomes king. —Irish legend Don’t touch me, don’t come near. I’ll shred your flesh from bone. Don’t even stare. I can smell you…
The night is busy with the growth of stars. Above us peaceful. Shiyáázh, my son, fusses in his cradleboard. The protective rainbow shaped by his father arches over his face to protect him. In the dark sand below Monster Slayer’s archenemy rises again to pull us off this rock where we’ve taken refuge since winter’s…
Yes, I was utterly wrong, I thought that humans were vertical wounds against the horizon, feeding their own fissures with wood and coal, knocking constellations with empty heads, smiling at desire with a missing golden tooth. And they aren’t like that, instead, humans are just humans like the songs that birds sing when braiding with…
Don’t look up, because the ceiling is suffering some serious violations of the electrical code, the whole chaotic kelplike mess about to shower us with flames. I think I can render this clearly enough— Bert’s saxophone resting between his knees and propped against the wheelchair’s seat where his body keeps shape-shifting— he’s Buddha then Shop-Vac…
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