Translated from the Spanish by Pablo Medina A man and a woman walk down the streetlaughing. They make plans.They had a grand time in the hotel where they made loveand they laugh, make another date for tomorrow. Life is wonderful.Tomorrow he’ll be laid out in a funeral home one hourbefore their tryst (the scaffoldingbroke loose…
One father culled talons from an eagle’s claw and strung them around our necks. Another father watched a dogwood tree burn slowly through the night. The yellowjacket froze in the space between our faces, two numb fingers brushing the edge of a sharp tack. You spoke softly—each word blinking hard then opening wide its soft eyes, baring for the…
I’ve got an arrow here.Loving the hand that sent itI the dart revere.—Emily Dickinson If it is attention that condemns me,then attention may absolve me: you pierced me cleanly,the hollow daylight proving I never flinched, a movementwhich implies anticipation. I held still. I held onto another love. I turned my back to openings—to doorwaysyou may…
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.—My memory of my father’s voice message Up the sky-escalator to meet his maker.An angel measures the draperies of my dad’s inscape with tailor’s tape, palpates the spot near his unfaith.Rate your life’s pain. Weighty, dad answers.A brain paint-peeled & snakebit at the end, he says. Like freebasing…
What are we doing in the world? In the world,where the children are playing world. Where they drivetheir little toy cars and trucks upand down the steep imaginary roadsof the mind— maneuvering around the oncoming traffic that barrels down around endless hairpin turns— What are we doing in the world? Where our neighbor’s girls operate on their dolls— Having laid them outin the late sideways light of Spring on a tousled,pink quilt on the grass, they amputate a…
Since I forget the namesof my lovers, my favorite dog,the flowers and constellationsI walk on earth like a spy from silence. In Walmart I forget my change.In sex I forget to cry out.In a dream I don’t know when to wake. I read endlessly, underlining every third word,but it is only the book of night…
Keep swallowing. You’re being poisoned,but you have the upper hand,so choke it down your torched throat.You know what it meansto be on the banks of the Scioto Riverwith Josh and Nick and a plastic bottle,the kind cyclists tuck onto their bikeframes, filled with every kind of liquoryour parents kept. Who would notice a shot or…
Day one of Marketing 101 is Don’t sell a product.Sell an experience. Benjamin Moore’s mostpopular nursery shades are forest floorand polar bear and furthermore, for lingering before heronand muslin and lichen, which falllike snow in the paint display, I mustowe and owe. I know my time is money.My home loan looms, laps its bowlof sweat equity….
In what was probably an interview with Krista Tippett,or maybe it was Rachel Zucker’s conversation with Carl Phillips,the question arose if we are the same personwe once were (always are) or if something changes to a pointof no return. I made it my mission to returnto Prospect Park after four years away. I want to…
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