Two boys sit on a log washed white by the tides and wind. A driftwood fire hisses on the sand. Down the beach, the black waves roar. It’s August 1995, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. One boy, one teenager, is pale. The other is dark. Between them, they pass the bottle of Scotch…
THE CLUMSIEST I When I pulled the book down, only vaguely curious,it fell open to fighting bulls.People seemed glad when the bull was driven in.It has a pretty red breast, but because it comes in winterto the window to be fed?Nothing here looked like it might have already been falling apart.The woman was alive there,…
I cried in public again. Drive,I said to my beloved, drive. I can’thave people watch me cry. It’s bad enoughwatching people watch me touch fruit atthe grocery store. Prickly pear glaringacross the sweet heaps. It’s not my faultthe citrus is too soft. It’s not my faultyou blame me. But maybe no onewas watching me cry,…
Translated by Iain Galbraith |one’s still clatteringin the box, in safekeepinglike a child’s first tooth iand then it is struckin the thickest darkness: ah!here i am. or was.
Translated by Ming Di Five: Pedigree of watermelons No one mistakes a watermelon for a meteorite.The theory of watermelons vs. stars is completely irrelevant.But we cannot deny that the earth is a kind of star.Therefore, it’s implausible to deny that watermelons have thelineage of stars. Four: Watermelon, ancestral hometown We live outside the earth, obviously.Obvious, that…
Big Spring, Arrow Rock, MO The body records its absences. Water, you take waterinto it—as presence, as absence, deep into the archiveof water you throw your mask. Also, your other mask.We, being matter, are negotiated. I had not thoughtto be angry, as such. But rage flexes its majestic undoing,its sustaining negation. The reparations the body…
And when I awoke, I saw that I was gone. Just like that, the woman Ithought I knew, gone into the morning like the mockingbird’s song.After all these years, it was a bit of a surprise, even though I had seen itcoming, the way you see a train approaching from afar, crawling alongthe tracks, silent…
After Hadrian Go, little sister,Flesh-flap peeledFrom blistered heel, Yellow pellicleSkimmed with a forkOff scalded milk. Where will you go,How far on wind-whistleTo marrow within a creature Not yet bornWhen I become no longerYour bodied brother? Vanishing twin, forever young,No reason to mournAs worms unfasten my tongue.
Translated by Katherine M. Hedeen and Victor Rodríguez Núñez each morning I wonder at my face:the same as always! Shouldn’t we reach the dawnwith face changed?After a new wordour lips should have a different feel! Only the beloved manages such a miracleface sheds featuresbefore the vision of the only otherwho creates it. Oh death that…
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