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  • Elephant Feelings

    1. Topsy, needy This is about an elephant, electrocuted one hundred years ago. Her name was Topsy, and she was famous at a time when people were still amazed by an elephant. Plus she did tricks. She could stand on her back legs, raising her front legs, wearing a gauze tutu. She was a star…

  • Tripped Oasis

    I begin to see the possibilities in dehydration just about now. Dehydration-a tantalizing word. Fog without moisture, space without stars or solar magnificence. Somewhere hidden are heaps of stone our guide found last week and, in our group’s wandering about, lost again. An effluvium of dust has hung over us for two months now, almost…

  • Maelstrom

    Wind shook the trees and rain crackled at the windows. Could it have been any other way? Rain coming down, clothes wet, water dripping from our hair? At the window, could it have been a ghost singing its final warning? Clothes wet, water dripping from our hair, he fell on me like rain. I could…

  • The Birthmark

    You showed up late and angry. You shat upon the floor. With that, how could we fail to recognize you? Your father, grief’s tent show wizard, the long connected silks pouring from his sleeve. And your mother? Haven’t you known me wholly as the spider knows each tilting and imperfect room she sews to be…

  • Certitude

    (July evenings occur as a name repeated.) Strange benefit of geography. He studied me at mirrors but recalled only photographs and houses leaning seasonal (a deluded shoreline). Ascertain bird or cicada near. Awaken to a darkened background clouded North by noon. Here is a reverse. We take of gales and a landscape of driving rain….

  • Before Long

    In the days that summer when his mother had to work cleaning the cottages in Dáchenko and Kóslan, Anton was being watched by the Shurins. He was twelve and blind, and his mother feared leaving him alone. He spent his mornings working with Oleg Shurin in the tomato patches along the bluff, and in the…

  • Tree Branch Blues

    It happened when I started . singing hope to sleep The sycamore wants inside . scrapes siding and screens afraid of the wind . Thirst wins over wariness at the waterhole all bow . I have seen rainfall in brightest sunlight . but not snowfall under stars . Something listening . at the bottom of…

  • [Girl] [Eyes] [Foreigner]

    A circle of young: vicious. A circle of young: smells like sugar. A circle of young: why such organization?                               Around what? Around how? And into the circle is assimilation. Meaning: The girl with blue eyes is a foreigner. Xenophobic is a fawning. It smells delicious, of lavender and his mother: He slept with her….