Sleeping in your Harlem apartment, I lie on the bed by the window to the airshaft, a dark flume cutting the center of the building, a pigeon’s alley from basement to roof. My head on the sill, I stretch my hands out. You’re in the next room at the upright, winning a young composer’s prize….
The fuzz knows the whiz and vice versa. This leads to cooperation. Your average dick is on the shake. A little jack will make him right. Count on a C-note per man per day; if there’s no bad beefs, you’re okay. Once you’ve fixed the bull, even when a mark blows, he’ll give you a…
I. Frigg’s Linchpin Vinyl spinning, midnight pimping in Mick’s gin mill, my lips mining this fish fry, till my thigh minx Iris flits hips with Jimmy. His pigmy mind thinking I’m blind, thinking bilk, grinding his milt digit with Iris’s fig. I’ll chill his smirk, slit his midriff. My fist’s flying, his spit’s flinging. I’m…
We are not scaled. We do not boast horns, or quills, or wooly coats. Our skin is pliable and thin. No fangs or scales conceal our throats. Worms regrow their missing tails, though tail is all they know of limb. A cat can close her inner eye. Ants hide beneath their skeletons. But humans, scant…
Sent for by mail, a chameleon waits with the rest of the freight for a name. Our name. We risk fraud for what arrives in 8–10 weeks: a limp form, silent at first, but alive. Guaranteed it will improve, we allow for quiet, for its remove in the terrarium: haven’t we summoned nature to our…
With each rebirth, a little more is lost. As pounds of feathers turn to flame—then ash—an ounce, at least, is bound to blow off. Take the breast. It may appear less lushly plumed than myth has led you to expect. In this unfortunate event, permit us to apologize on our bird’s behalf….
My father says, “Face it, you live in a civilization of mirrors and sinks,” invading my real room, the bathroom. I pull down an eyelid till I see the pained pink meniscus underneath. I “O” my mouth, poke the mascara wand at my eyelashes, not missing by much. It’s makeup’s…
You’re a nurse now and this ward ain’t the schoolbook, so you sedate him, paraldehyde, 5 ccs each hip, and don’t expose it to air, it’ll turn to vinegar, it’ll eat plastic and it reeks, use a glass syringe and DON’T DROP IT. Junkies howl and sweat and beg but they won’t seize and code…
“Name the eight states that begin with the letter M,” Mohammed, my driving teacher, says. I’m forty-one. Am I in school? I glance at the rearview mirror, glad I can’t see my embarrassing STUDENT DRIVER bumper sticker. I spread a ghost-map across the windshield, quickly scroll down the East Coast, top to bottom. “Maine. Massachusetts….
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