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  • Communion

    I am the tuck of turquoise water, the slap of spray on ocean rocks. I am the boat, the effort of her engines, the voice of the captain pointing out the woman whipped against the cliff by wind, her red cap. I am the trails of bindweed at her feet, the labyrinth of roots. I…

  • Eyes Shut, Walden Pond

    Water as green as the pair of pickerel nibbling on the matter raised by my feet. The bottom: mulch, scrap limbs, snowmelt springs, and nothing too large or deep. Drift across, flat on your back, a mote. “One, two, three,” says mother to her boy as she heaves him by his foot over her shoulder,…

  • Michigan August

    Far from Puebla and Michoacán men wake to pick peaches and beans. Light rolls out its bolt of cloth. Yard sales, craft shows, the six-pack loneliness of rural towns. On either side of I-95, going to Sonora, butterflies don’t care who drives more than fifty-five for a cheap pint of faith in the jackpots. Mars…

  • Doo-Bop

    I thought you were through, but like good sex, you keep coming back. Miles, what’s up with Doo-Bop? When I listen to you, I hear a car crash, a voice reaching climax, a flock of birds with metal wings aiming for the moon. Your ears danced, when street movements float through your window. Hip-Hop, Rap….

  • Postcards

    “It’s not a cult,” Laura wrote. “The land is beautiful and the roads are smooth. In the fields there’s corn-tiny husks, green and perfect-shaped. God planted them. He built the roads. There’s so much I never understood.” “God doesn’t build roads,” I wrote back. “People do. Mexican workers and kids without college degrees. Come home…

  • Luxury

    When light came enough that the sky was blue, Ivy and Track had been driving for an hour already, the three girls and Tad in the back and Bella-Jean smug between them in the front seat, holding a paper bag to throw up in if she had to. Buzzy, the baby, lolled on Ivy's lap…

  • X Marks the Spot

    The thirsty mule's lips at my ear, I died alongside the river. I died in the media event, with the overhead luggage and antimacassar, my neighbor's dark drink spilled in my lap. I died in the hospital, the waiting room's television full of the Sopworth Camel's excreted black smoke; I died in my favorite armchair…

  • Bigfoot Happy Hour

    Only the fluttering pages of a few songbooks left. At the bar, the large, gawky males idle over jigsaw puzzles: sailing ships in profile, sad steamers adrift on a wedge of unbelievable blue. Tired of running, the rugged womenfolk nodded off hours ago. Where else to dream on a chilly night, the planet hurtling down…