Article

Freak

For Byron Burford A child is born with a third eye smack in the middle of his forehead. It's not worth much. He can't see with it, can't ogle with it, he can only blink with it. But this is good enough to get him a job in a freak show so he spends his…

The Call

In religion class we argued about the weather in heaven. Was it always sunny? or did it rain once a century for contrast? I said perfect meant perfect— sky would always be cloudless, the sun at meridian, shining evenly through translucent saints, who, like a stained glass dome, would project their colors— martyr red, hermit…

None Other

Matthew 27.50,51 What can still bleed is not yet food. In the ninth hour Jesus howled and his wounds' crusts were opened. Blood repainted its dried trails. He felt the scourge's language on his back burn for interpretation, final insight, some emphatic look into the memoirs of the Cruel, the Other. But none came. His…

Sleepwalking

For a while it happened that Koslowski, a notorious sleepwalker, would leave his bed every night, wander through the harbor areas, return somehow, and in any case wake up utterly filthy in the cellar on a pile of coal and briquettes. In order to out-smart himself, so to speak, Koslowski has lately taken to lying…

Applications

Last night, when drunken cries and ugly music poured from open windows of apartments, and the street outside my door was echoing with shouts of boys and girls in open cars, I typed my application, cheerfully, for a teaching job up in Alaska. Who cares if night lasts half a year as long as cold…

At Your Hanging

The hangman weeps. He kneels and begs forgiveness of your shoes. OK, OK, you nod, and your headbag's spice, its tropical jute bouquet, grows subtler, like some wine you are adrift in. This the hangman frantically understands, and everyone here, in sunlight and authentically ash-blackened sackcloth, deeply feels. Now we lay us down to dream…

Ode To A Dress

Like the purple seed inside a locket the memory of such a dress hides in the heart growing what seems so slight. For years I've been asking myself why falling in love with floaty pink stripes, soft cotton. At the mall, always alone, slightly embarrassed to be there at all, I lose myself among the…

In The Woods Near Munich

— April, 1945 This soldier, this boy who moves through the innocent trees, does he regret the man he half-pushes, half-carries? The Rhine — simply another battle, a collage of mines, the human spasm: hands, hearts lost to maggots in the undergrowth. He marches on a thin gravel road, his footfall, meagre. A dung beetle…