Maybe it means somethingwhen Jeremiah of the Shopping Cartrolls his chariot across this monster parking lotto ask about my soul again. Maybe I should climb aboard this time—we’ll break Wonder Bread,sip Mountain Dew,toss twelve-packs to the children. Maybe I’ll be a part of some miracle—feel for once,memory resisting her adjectives.Hear dreams changing their minds.Every wheel…
While you get high with your therapist, I’m smoking a spliff in a cemetery, readingabout the Birds of Tennessee, wishing we were playing house in New York.The art is beautifuleverywhere, but all descriptions of art are the same.Theory elides the gap between aesthetics and ethics.The greathorned owl lives in the suburbs. I’m dismayedto learn the barred…
Translated from the Chinese by Liang Yujing “Happy Spring Festival …” I say to the sky.It looks clear and bright. I salute the world.It keeps silent. I greet humankind.The large crowd, once there, are all gone today. Seen through the glass, the world is empty.Where are the people? They seem to be wrapped tight…
I must have been sitting at the wrong table—the conversation was about chilblains,someone insisted only the British knowwhat they are—who among us had hadthem, those red eruptions of welts onhands and feet shivering in the damp cold?No one.(I wanted to change the subject so I didn’t saymy father had chilblains when he swamin our icy…
people like to say, though younever liked when I said itabout this painting, your portraitof a sad clown—your favorite kind.Hair mussed, her greasepaintfaint but still there, she stares outinto an empty place beyondthe unframed canvas. What can I sayto make her stir? Even as a kid,I knew immediately—it was you, Mom.“Not a self-portrait,” you insisted,though…
On the special ed school tour, he askswhat is that tiny room with the tiny window,and the assistant admissions directortells us it is the seclusion room.We look at the closet-sizefeatureless space with the metal-reinforced door and large thicksteel bar on the outside, and our facesare not as shatter-proofas the glass in that window.With all the…
How to describe the colorof a pond gone fuguein autumn windsurface tinctured blue,sky-stained and deeper watertea-stained from steeping in peatthat netted entanglementthat took a thousand yearsto form. How far the landcan go in tellinga story, waterdark as obsidian nighttoward which I progressevery day feelingendless longing to hold on.
Translated from the Braj Bhasha by Chloe Martinez Listen, his gorgeous face is all I can see. I’m living and breathing him; he stays rent-free in my mind— what I’m saying is, I keep seeing my beloved. Wherever his feet have touched the ground, I start dancing. I’m telling you: his face. Mine. Transfixed. Mira’s…
Dear Dactinomycin, I have a question: How do yousave a body from the body itself? Your job: stop cells dividing, freeze growth.The proof: hair coming out in clumps, disappeared eyelashes, platelets drained solow they called for a transfusion. A mother’s job: grow a small body, then grow it up.Even volunteer to disappear, like mitosis, after…
No products in the cart.