These files in longhand preserve . lies I tell myself about shoulderblades . whose outlines I never traced about eyes that once met mine . but did not turn back after they had passed . I arrange them by last name made up when I can’t recall . exchanged when I can . Each tells…
What happened to sweet heat, the sneezeweed, the luna moth and gingham sleeve, sipped Slurpies and reedy kayaks, the sponge-bathed trees? Why are the nights so flustered and furrowed, dusks crimped by crooked V’s of snow geese bored with palmettos? Why does the full moon pinprick the draft, neurotic winds reentering therapy, the light, an…
A spring wind hustles hundreds of pages into the street, discarded leaflets like pieces of a shredded textbook under the feet of high school students let out for lunch. A young woman bends and grasps a flier: sliver of promise, passport to enter through the golden arches, gateway to the west, up escalator to immediate…
The furrows deepen on your forehead as you watch the TV story of Chief Joseph. Later, as your amber eyes—two villages, fade into the darkness, I deliver a knockout without mercy, “Does marrying me make you feel good?” Some have been known to bob up with “Somewhere in my bloodline is a Cherokee.” Your sad…
what about their celibacy? widow playing maid for an in-law and if high-born inheriting three thousand not more shaving her head wearing only white I do not know this law lying on my lord’s burning branches I do not mind getting old my forehead creases though my mouth still turns up I love trying on…
If this world were mine, the stereo starts, but can’t begin to finish the phrase. I might survive it, someone could add, but that someone’s not here. She’s crowned with laurel leaves, the place where laurel leaves would be if there were leaves, she’s not medieval Florence, not Blanche of Castile. Late March keeps marching…
I would’ve called him Ice Cream, or Monopoly, or Grand Slam: something I especially liked. He’d have played catch with me when no one else was home. He might have come from planet Fev, where God taught him kung fu. He might have traded crescent kicks with Christ. Or been a girl. Maybe on Fev,…
Your John Wayne days and ways are on the wane. Who needs another gangster, when this world is jammed with gangsters, brilliant, slick, insane? You whose thing is you’ve been boyed and girled and worked and played, then turned and stretched and squashed. What’s with it with you anyway? Ideas you spew about your innocence…
—main character in Spike Lee’s film She’s Gotta Have It How many nights I have lain in bed thinking of you, Nola Darling. I climb the fire escape from two floors below to see you soaking your stained panties in the sink, frying your liver and onions. I have seen you naked in the bathroom,…
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