for Lee Chapman The sky first. Hobbled by an absence, no vertebrae, the weight of an incessant moon—that extraction to one’s own madly grinning core over and over. And those stars itching away like a feast of lice; even its underpinnings are strung only to echo to echo . . ….
Dear Laird Hunt, It was with great interest that I read the description of your novel and the accompanying biographical material that appeared this weekend in the monthly literary supplement to our otherwise dull and basically pretty crappy county paper. I was so intrigued, in fact, that no sooner had I finished reading it I…
take a boy on a motorcycle feeling powerful. He has achieved the status of the boy on the motorcycle. Only something is not quite right. He rides it like yes, in and out, back and forth like day after day, all okay. That’s just what’s the matter, like nothing happens. So when he gets home,…
I sought vengeance, and now I dream of forgiveness. Let me explain how that came about. I want to lay it all out. My friends, I hope this last journal of mine will reach you, so you can be with me, with my thoughts, as long as it takes you to read it, and I…
Sludge heart. Pot-metal heart. Scree . . . Some leaves fell. Schlock heart. Chil- blain heart. Piss-stain heart. Gelded heart. O heart incontinent. 24-carat electro-plate heart. Cicadas were silent. Bumper-sticker heart. Foul-mouth stink-bomb heart. Black. Black. Black. And I sang all day. Drop-dugged wolf- bitch heart. And held birds in my hands. Thistle heart. Briar…
Dad, Todd, Mal, and me are sitting in the positions I’ve assigned us, and the Mormon Tabernacle Boring is singing the National Anthem really slowly. After forever, we all put our Orioles caps back on as the Pirates take the field, and it’s showtime. My palms are sweating. Mom comes in. “Uh-oh,” I say, not…
Aged prophets, cradled in Crivelli’s gold, on a heat-waved page replicating quattrocento frescos, seem shy above the trees’ periscopes as if the sky were an unfamiliar cathedral, and, should they appear there now, standing between receding clouds, how gilded their halo, what color their gowns and what scripted tablet would they hold to admonish the…
(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….
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…
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