Our dead will not congregate but come to us, distinctly, as they were: her stooped majesty, his cold dreamy self, that darling girl’s sly smile, which could be why, when I have them meet in heaven or here at night in my room, they make absolutely clear in the way they don’t open their mouths…
In the train, in the dim glass, you, long dead, slip your face over mine. A mask, a shade, a past that is somewhere there, in the dark but not here, nor in any other scored-out street my dog-eared notebook holds, not here, your voice gone, your name caught in a fold of paper in…
Somewhere there is order, a multiverse of order. I could have sewed that rip in the lining with special strong thread, washed pillows for the refugees, cut new gardenias to replace the yellowed blouses collapsed in the vase, called someone, hoping they’d be happy to hear from me. I could have faced the hard time…
The other camels hobbled nearby snort and chuff and in general make a lot of noise betwixt them. Though they are called ships of the desert, these camels are nothing like our fishing boats. They are good for milk and their turds are spectacularly fire-worthy. But none of us have yet figured out how to…
When the sun broke up the thunderheads, and dissonance was consigned to its proper place, the world was at once foreign and known to me, that was shame leaving the body. I had lived my life from small relief to small relief, like a boy pulling a thorn from his foot. Wet and glistening, twisting…
for my mother, Veronica Cazier (1955-1991) The undertaker gripped my hand. I said I wanted Dairy Queen. I touched her cheek because I needed proof—and after, Dairy Queen. It’s what I asked for every day: to go to Dairy Queen. Worse than dead, she wasn’t quite herself. I pictured Dairy Queen. I’d finished second grade…
Sometimes, after snow, you find yourself in a field of laughing gulls shaken and spat in a mass kill and your boots are the only noise. It’s like a bad joke I cannot resist telling. Enough. Hunger is plenty. Everything is dangerous. New moon, the red fox is out walking. Extinction is nothing to the…
As for the fly I chased around the bathroom with a towel that night, swatting, slapping, thrashing, pounding, kicking with one foot the toothbrush cup onto its side, dislodging the tea curtain with a misplaced elbow, unable for all my efforts to terminate his gallant loops and arabesques, his beeline dives and fighter-pilot vectorings, his…
I’m a cipher. Before that, I was a loose cannon. Before that, I was a zealot. I preached on the street corners. I accosted strangers in subways to tell them I had good news for them. Before that, I worked on the assembly line in a fireworks factory. I stuck fuses in firecrackers and poured…
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