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The Trial

February creeps. The date like a pregnant moon circled round on my calendar. But I do not even know what to wish for.   When I tell my oldest friend this, she says, “Sometimes they shit bomb them,” thethey being other inmates; thethem being my father’s kind. She says this from a distance, as if…

Worms

I remembered that morning because I woke up to such dark. It was my mother who woke me, came into my room, and said I could help earn a little extra money now. She got me a job with her out at the hog farm. She was dressed in comfortable clothes, soft jogging clothes, and…

Bible All Out of Order

One thing’s for sure; in the future, the morgues are going to be full of tattoos. It’s going to be more colorful, and easier to manage: “Hey Jeff, move Dolphin-Shoulder-Girl to Tray Seven.” “And get Mr. Flames-On-My-Neck out for the doc.”   In Italy the tabloids are talking about the “Ambulenza di Morte,” The Ambulance…

The Endling

They flew her in from Sweden, and by God, she looked it. Youthful. Leggy. Blond. Eyes like polished stones and features sharp as an army knife. She’d volunteered. And for what? At first I didn’t know. I’d never been to the Galápagos. Hell, never been farther south than Tijuana. Livy and I had stumbled across…

Recast, Again

You are your father’s broad back                          re-writ in small script. Your feet, like his, grasp the soil, confident       the planet will never spin too fast                      to throw you off.     I never was so sure. I spent most of my childhood watching                 the clouds                 move while I stayed still.  …

The Cure

I arrived on Lopez Island in late October. Earlier that year, my mother had died, and on the ferry crossing from Seattle, I found myself thinking of her. Alive, she had been like adverbs or the color blue, impossible to ignore. I’d hoped that in a new setting she might be less present. Instead, pieces…

Being Left Behind

Unpacking my suitcase, I realized, annoyed, that one of my green socks had been left behind at the beach. At the time, it must have fallen behind the pousada wardrobe,but by now, who knows if it hadn’t become a floor rag,a bag for screws, a flannel scrapto polish furniture? If it had been a jacket,…

Memento

“Today we would have been married twenty-five years,” he said, looking at me through the rearview mirror. I didn’t react: I had jumped into a taxi on Nove de Julho Avenue. The traffic was terrible; we spent half an hour traveling to Faria Lima, and arrived at Pinheiros Street, all in the most aseptic silence….