You believe, if you cast wide enough your net of want and will, something meaningful will respond. Perhaps we are the response— each a cresting echo hesitating, vibrant with the moment before rippling back. But you’re steadfast as Odysseus strapped to the mast, as you were in ’81 when Reagan ordered you back to work….
Whether in chrome surgery or gymnasium toilet— everyone is expelled bloody and bleating, tube attached from mass to mass, the slick itself turning vivid. Whether there or in this floor-through, Mother, I have missed you terribly— miss you, though I know about mothering myself. * This afternoon Madeline Carmichael, 61, was convicted of fatally beating…
There’s no bobber at the surface. Nothing between you but trust in dumb suck on rubber boots & faith’s rusted buckles sunk into mud banks. Eyes trained on the current backed up against itself like a row of empty boxcars. Nylon wound around an index finger, stand ready for a tug come alive. When a…
The whites and the blacks are still newcomers. You can tell: the way we claim flags, that we fight. The other nomads were moved on, learning that land does not love humans and is not at home with us, even when it lets us grow ourselves food, even when it lets us house our dead….
She remembers an absence of blue billowing down, playing loose with her, the impetuous sailor her mother warned her against time after time. The light did not invite her to dance, nor shine upon her only. In countless borrowed rooms she swallowed its gleaming intimations. Later, in the dark, she lies on the bed, recalling…
it’s the girl in deep water who will not drown (drum) come down (drum) come down (drum) zora’s instrument hidden in the belly (drum) carried across the atlantic (drum) it’s a mystery to master (drum) it don’t stop (drum) don’t stop (drum) gotta story to tell (drum) won’t stop (drum)…
She pays attention to the hair, not her fingers, and cuts herself once or twice a day. Doesn’t notice anymore, just if the blood starts flowing. Says, Excuse me, to the customer and walks away for a Band-Aid. Same spot on the middle finger over and over, raised like a callus. Also the nicks where…
Empty ice-cream carton in a kitchen garbage can. Up all night with your mother. He beat her again. Up all night eating ice cream, you made your mother laugh. ly Life is lone Duke’s hands on your shoulders, you play it again. Cancer eats moth holes through you and you and you. ly…
San Antonio, Florida They don’t mow on Sundays in San Antonio. They keep the seventh day for Paz and Neruda, for Simic angels whose wings are made of smoke. And they walk their dogs softly in the morning, so they will not miss the smallest utterance of Whitman or of John Clare, who pace the…
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