Braced against the worst gusts yet this summer astride the promontory’s highest ridge, breathless we stare out across sea-glare into distance diaphanous as mist. * Wind-whirred grass buzzes our ankles here where temples rise bone-bright through blood worship with a view. The present scatters roughly like whitecaps on a sea-face. * We…
for Roger C. Frank A fighter jet etches ink white as sperm on the stark sky while January troops deploy from Camp LeJeune, just like my first husband did in 1968 on his way to Viet Nam to wipe the Commie Gooks off the map. Before he could spell Khe Sahn, think massacre, he was…
The hotter the sun the whiter the bloom, my grandmother used to say of the dogwoods, Christ’s trees, still bearing his blood, and our hearts, of course, in need of redemption. On her cue, I’d wield a bowl of potato peels out past the barn to the hog pen where…
Whenever I remember Lin, I think of taxicabs. We spent so much of our time sitting in the back of one, somewhere in Shenzhen—speeding away from the border-crossing station, or returning to it. In my memory it was always a bright morning, sun streaming through the dusty windows, or late at night, our bodies…
In line with many strangers, we were roughed-up bodies ready for more. We clasped hands. A song made us iron. The line of us could walk and sing. The line of us went on and on—up the steps of the capitol and out into towns with quarter-inch phone books. Some in line knew the gods…
The brown boy hits me, but says he is sorry. The brown girl, his sister, says it’s because he likes me. I say, Yuk! He likes me? Well, I hate him. The black girl pinches me and says, Scaredy-cat, tattletale, little pussy . . . I dare you to hit back. The white girl grabs…
There are deer here. I can feel them. Antler firm, pelt soft lingering close-by. Ghost deer. Albino white. The entire herd a miracle. Wondrous revelations occur rarely, once a lifetime. Here, twenty-four Snuggle treelines wintertime camouflaged. Sisters of mine.
All the land around us belongs to Major York. Also the house we live in, the barn behind, the swineherd’s hut beyond that. Also his the apple trees in the orchard and every apple, even the windfalls rotting softly in the deep grass. His, each pheasant hen in the brush and all her chicks, every…
There is not so much water here as pollen. A lesson in obedience, in Victorian industry: I am busy, busy therefore the child will live. Sheets blossoming like crucified roses. I beg the silk of a single petal. Am denied. You will not need this currency for your particular journey. I return to the stove….
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