I figured if I studied enough, life would make senseso I skipped the games and the girls, ate lunchin a hurry and spent the afternoons in the library. On Saturday nights when everyone was outgunning their engines, I camped alone at the beachlistening to the lap of waves and the chittering of birds. Flashlight in…
The oracles say the quiet part out loud.A wife is a machine of someone else’sdreams. To survive, you must drown a heartthat wants to float, muscle atrophying in salt.Make an artifact out of your pain, a tributeto the girl you used to be. Ignore the hot pinchin your chest from holding your breathfor a decade….
Was it madness that enabled you to fall into the ocean—if you were “dancing” on the rocks as I’ve been told, it couldhave been loss of balance—we say that of the mad don’t we,I can see each taunting lift of foot, the bitten hands flailing,I can, off East Haven more than forty years passing each…
1. They sleep on their shadows,long for no one,their speech drifts weightlessthrough their lanes. Gold thread, fistfuls of barley,a jar of Aristaeus’s gold,an old woman’s needle,her pearly lace lining the harbor road. Taxis for Darnis awaiting passengers,Sudanese farmhands milling about,and into the bay, the sponge pickers go onflirting with death. You and I are two,I…
Like a pomegranate, I wore my garnets quietly. Nudelip, beige tongue. I took the shape of clouds passing by. I was a tool for divination—you used me to findwater & blamed me when I drank. We dreaded you together. Still, I kept my smile on, even whenyou hid the key to my mouth. I was…
Just there, deep in shadow, the peeling paint of an old door to a carriage house behind untrimmed cypress branches,a shade somewhere between turquoise and navy wrung by rain to namelessness,a color we can no longer locate on the spectrum, the lost blue of tenderness and sorrow overlain with exaltation,a door we walk past once in the gathering…
His beard’s still dark but a little grayer. I, too, have a gray hair or twotwisting through the dark ivy between my legs. Honestly, I’m surprisedhe recognizes me standing up. He looks well, fit, his smile as generousas I remember, all those times on my back staring up at a faded pictureof hot air balloons…
Sometimes, we let ourselvesbelieve we’re talking to his ghost. Sometimes, we think memory, its rhyme. How long can you stay afloat? my sister askswhen he admits to paying his ex-girlfriend’s rent again. He doesn’t care that she’s seeing other men and avoids his calls—doesn’t care that he owes back-taxes and hasn’t held down a job in years. He’s…
Where are the flying starsof my childhood? Evenings litlike a glitterball’s sparkle againstthe night’s dim walls. Their absenceis like aging: one less pulse each year. I want my childhood of darknessbedazzled again with shards of light—my tiny lighthouses, my suburbs of surprise—where the shadows of dogwoodsand crepe myrtles wink at me.Tell me I’ll never be…
No products in the cart.