Poetry

All I beg of this blighted yearis to wake up well-sleptearly one August morningand to pull on yesterday’sclothes and ride the mile or twoto the deli on Brackett Roadwhen the sun is soft and lowand the waves in the distance soundlike a second breeze and to leanmy bike against the picnic tableand on my way…

When you’re in a helicopter with ableeding brain and the pilot reassuresyou it’s a beautiful night to fly,it’s hard to know whether to feelrelieved. I suppose that’s betterthan an iffy or a terrible night to fly.Though isn’t every night a terriblenight to fly with a bleeding brain. And would dying in a helicopter be worsethan…

What is this thing that must be won by experience?It has me walking on sidewalks next to myself, bothselves watching women and men coming toward us,the fruit vendors and lovers— I wonder about the husband and wife, she collectsmoney and bags the fruit, he loads and unloads, and they alwaysseem cold, her face chapped by…

What is this thing that must be won by experience?It has me walking on sidewalks next to myself, bothselves watching women and men coming toward us,the fruit vendors and lovers— Why does everything occur in pairs, the glanceand the glance averted, the gaze and the gazereturned? A woman drops her scarf and anotherreaches toward it….

—from Definitions Freudenschreck, or “intense pleasure-fright”—leave it to the GermansTo coin a word for the fleeting sense of being seizedBy such an inexplicable joy it verges on terror.Or maybe it’s inexplicable terror pretending to be joy.Also, a physical phenomenon: neurologists say the amygdalaGlows red as a jack ball whether subjects gaze at images of planetesimals…

1.Woke up early to write, killed flies instead. 2.In the pot, I boil bones with huājiāo and fennel, attempting toreproduce a past taste. The result is a gray diluted broth, ghost enoughto conjure. 3.On Facebook you can tag a picture as “my grandmother.” If you hover your mouse over the blue tag of “my grandmother,”…

You will want to go back. Notright away, perhaps, not as you runtowards the train’s open doors and not during the nightmilesin which the distance collapsesunder the wheels into ordinary darkness. And maybe not while laid acrossthe row of empty airplane seats,the young Chinese couple helping you order food the first to witnessyour foreignness and…

—after Wrecked Archive B-45HqDHfqp by Patty Paine I am inching along the Mackinac Bridge, passenger in a van.Through the frosted window, the sun is a yellow explosion,blown open, its blood a sulfur-yellow sheen that pools in thedistance on top of Lake Huron. The clack-clack-clack of thetires over the bridge’s steel grates sounds like one of my…

—after Wrecked Archive B-VAYKjKGqG image by Patty Paine Initially, I think the clown is in charge, because he is tweetingnothing but commands—no salutations, no jokes or puns orother clown-speak—but I am wrong. “I know who all of youpunks are!” he yells, shaking his fist, clutching a list that hethinks identifies the children, but he is wrong….