The Roosevelt Mineral Baths Do you believe the proof is not in the body? In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, John walks among the olive trees by the river, looking for the women who will let him touch their faces with his hands. At night in the park I unwind the…
When the iceberg pulled by a team of white horses comes sliding down the boulevard, the crowd, which had been so festive, whistling, hooting, throwing their hats in the air, grows silent. Almost silent are the ten Kikuyu warriors striding in slow motion, one clenched fist shooting up in the air every ten paces…
We squat in the sun, in black dirt abraded from the mountain. You prick my arm with a thorn. “Does it hurt?” It does hurt. We’re playing nurse and mother getting her abortion. You draw out all my blood, then with invisible gauze from your imaginary white enamel tray bandage my sore arm. In her…
No coat, bad shoes, caught sudden In a spring downpour, a girl scrambles Into a small market on her way Home from school. The old man is alone, Picking bruised apples from a bin, tossing them Softly, one at a time into a slop can. Usually, he chases kids out, having caught them lifting Chocolate…
Catherina Schrader, midwife, nearly an apparition in mists rising from the Wadden Zee, follows a stranger to his boggy farm. The man is afraid of his wife, her cries, her twisted face. Who knows what may enter a woman and flourish there? There have been stories—monsters with fingers and toes grown together like pigs’ feet…
Angry at my persistent rejection of what he said Was his love, a skinny neighborhood boy Once held his mother’s kitchen knife To my twelve-year-old throat. This comes to mind Today as I walk past a couple of tough teenage boys Near the local high school, dressed in the same Oversized black shirts and backwards-turned…
The mother kneels beside her grieving child, grieving because the whale has not come, because the whales are elsewhere, not heaving clear of the water where child and mother can see them. In the brilliant light of a day at sea, the child whimpers. Her own small sea ebbs and rolls until she spews an…
The muscular hollows: eye, lung, heart, stomach, hand. The parts that you enliven: lips, hair, spine. The necessary and cleansing wastes— sweat, blood, urine, stool, and sperm. But certain places of my body are not specified or named until reached by the first unexpected drop of rain, or the careless, accidental touch of your fingernail….
I can taste that tongue for me you’ve set to rubbing in your pocket Like a stone excited cricket, flint you’ll strike when right in moonsteam: blue Glue, apogee, cunt of night. Coyotes, a fire round in a ground. Much hair is all of your black bones suckling Open in my throat all…
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