Moons falling, invisible hours, my son never leaves our nest—when the house is quiet, it’s most dangerous. The air deflates to flat, a flag cloaking the rooms. It scares me— this silence—his teenage shadow beneath my door, he pauses, moves on. His footsteps patter and fade, distant like gunfire on the horizon. His noises muffled…
First, you carry no rider. It is to sting and eat sweat, this life, but more it is to live near windows mostly in quiet, or to wait for the fast opening, and when it comes, I want to climb down from myself. I want to leave go the bridle. So I have started watching,…
Caught on my own between homes, I had no choice but to live for awhile in the Lost and Found department of Trans-World Airline at LaGuardia Airport where I worked my first job and could not live. With a key to the dark back of the storage hangar, I made a space of lost suitcases…
Twitter: If you had a mermaid phase as a kid you’re probably bisexual now How did I not understand when I swam with my ankles crossed to make a fin or when I asked my friend to touch my arm, my skin? She wrote love you xo on my ribcage in black pen. All summer we…
From the roof of the horse barn, shingles of ice begin their irreversible skid. Hoofprints frozen last December appear freshly stamped in muddy earth. It’s been winter so long, he fears the thaw. What will become of the shadow-self that glided beside him, after the Chevy was parked at the Marathon station, and they skied…
—after Ghassan Zaqtan Dawn breaks slowly here and the rosefinch makes its ablutions in the nascent light. Dust has passed us by as has a westerly wind, and now the quadcopters chatter their morning songs. Minarets are strewn about the city awaiting a proper burial. The shepherd prophets are long gone, dear poet, but the…
Abandoned railway station, Texas desert December 4, 1900* Here they touch people all night with the mouths of rifle barrels. That is how the guards tap out their count of one hundred and twelve Boricuas going rigid inside this chilling box. I close my eyes, I count three white shirts rowing night’s current. Youngbloods who…
Translated from the Spanish by Pablo Medina That pasta in cream sauce we made when we finished, that pasta we ate still trembling (we left the water on the stove, on a very low flame, and fifteen minutes before the end you flew, barefoot, and threw it in and barefoot flew back, remember?) That pasta…
At the Musée Gustave Moreau I looked at all the surfaces while you explained the stories. At the base of the spiral stairs we bared our eyes at Les Chimères, a painting pale and unfinished. What a heavy task he set himself to finish with color and form all the empty limbs, I…
Spring 1996 - Digital