You’re kept in capsules on the bathroom counter, a synthetic strain of vitamin A, sealedfor potency. Your purpose is to shieldthe face from signs of aging. Over-the-counter lacks the power existing in medical grade— though too much, over time, can blur the vision, incite a kind of skin-peeling conditionor frail the bones. Your purest form betrayed the man who…
Before your birth, I marked you as my own,the way I marked your mother before hers.Inscribed on every cell of every bone,the standard of my family never blurs.I coil between the makings of your bedand in the small hours whisper you awake.I poison every sentence in your headand all those comforts other people take.Eat salmon, buy a doodle, down the pillsthe doctor tenders…
Translated from the Spanish by Pablo Medina A man and a woman walk down the streetlaughing. They make plans.They had a grand time in the hotel where they made loveand they laugh, make another date for tomorrow. Life is wonderful.Tomorrow he’ll be laid out in a funeral home one hourbefore their tryst (the scaffoldingbroke loose…
Down at the beach.The lake trying to wash the moon off its back.The moon trying to ride the horse of the lake.Me lighting a candle and sticking it in sand.Another. Making a circle for the windto burn its fingers on. For the moonto read a flickering elegy to itself.The infinite same syllable of the surf.Is…
well—i suppose we could spend more time pretendingi bought a new suit for carnegie hall—bought a new suitfor the occasion, bought a new suit with dues from parisyes it’s true, he pays a price for an america which stillleaves a balance. well—i have a future held in the lungsof this great thundering silence. this sleeping…
We were downing cheap red wine at a barcalled Library Books free for the takingThe carafe like a blood-filled IV bagI opened a book on palmistry LifelinesWhen my words began to slur you took me to Mickie-Dee’s A ghoul was thereand the grim reaper Masks on every tableI saw bones in the…
It is not my birthday but todayI walk by the cold shrubsof my town’s finest lanepopping birthday cake jelly beansinto my mouth one by one.How spectacular, the waywe’ve reduced an eventinto a little waxen egg!It is speckled like a robin’s egg;pink, blue, yellow, orange.It even has the tasteof the bend where the caketurned crusty caramel…
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.—My memory of my father’s voice message Up the sky-escalator to meet his maker.An angel measures the draperies of my dad’s inscape with tailor’s tape, palpates the spot near his unfaith.Rate your life’s pain. Weighty, dad answers.A brain paint-peeled & snakebit at the end, he says. Like freebasing…
One father culled talons from an eagle’s claw and strung them around our necks. Another father watched a dogwood tree burn slowly through the night. The yellowjacket froze in the space between our faces, two numb fingers brushing the edge of a sharp tack. You spoke softly—each word blinking hard then opening wide its soft eyes, baring for the…
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