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  • Thirst

    Drinking, looking into the glass, I see a deep well, some clouds moving over it. At the bottom, a small lizard. A gold vapor swimming up. His eyes are blue, sad. He says listen you've had enough of one world, now try two. He melts back into the glass, the clouds break off. I swear,…

  • Blame

    Where no question possibly remains—someone crying,      someone dead—blame asks: whose fault? It is the counterpart, the day to day, the real-life, of those      higher faculties we posit, logic, reason, the inductions and deductions we yearningly      trace the lines of with our fingers. It also has to do with nothing but itself, a tendency, a habit,…

  • New Dresses

    Mrs. Lovelady, in a morning-fresh white uniform, helped Lisa's mother-in-law, Mrs. Worthy, into the car. Lisa could only stand by and watch. The bucket seat was too low and dangerously tilted for Mrs. Worthy as she was now, and Lisa wished she had listened to David, and had come in his car instead of her…

  • Ensenada Maternity Ward

    This is where they put all the women: the mothers, the injured, the diseased. Someone has moved into the bed next to mine: we share a water pitcher and a bar of soap. Her name is Irena. She is the color of burnt umber, tinged yellow by jaundice and alcohol. She smells of urine and…

  • New Car

    Doesn't, when we touch it, that sheen of infinitesimally      pebbled steel, doesn't it, perhaps, give just a bit, yes, the subtlest yielding, much less than flesh      would, we realize that, but still, as though it were intending in some formal way that      at last we were to be in contact with the world of inorganics,…

  • Dogs

    At the meeting a guy named Ben had talked about a slip he'd had six weeks earlier. Stopped at a package store and for no reason he knew, walked out with a six-pack. Drank it, called the wife who told him to get lost: went ahead and got lost. ended up in the Portsmouth P.D….

  • November, Mesnil-en-Thelle

    The wild snow foretelling winter the snow that whistles down the supernatural into the ordinary world the snow that covers the little matchgirl while she dreams the snow that melts in the gypsies' campfire that melts in their song that snakes over the black branches in the North of France where my aunt calls to…

  • Secondary Indifferents

    Every evening dries on a roof of tar, and the screens twang under the weight of bugs in a place not yet given to me. Metaphor doesn't mediate our understanding of the world; we take what comes. Cars in the late night and screams from children are linked to appetite, and make me fear for…