Poetry

The News (A Manifesto)

So today, yet another Guyanan will try to run the border dressed in a dead housewife's hair—all they've recovered since her disappearance from a downtown shopping mall. An “incident,” the paper says. One of those “routine occurrences”— wrestling my trust ever further from the publicans assigned to keeping us safe, whole. Rather: vow to stay…

Ultrasound

The purple iris holding its throat open, a music too faint to be heard enters the waiting room, the singing clear, but only to the inner ear. We have come for a glimpse of the unborn, in white robes ghosting through the exam room. On the screen a hand, a blur of bone, the skull…

The Turtle Lovers

Those armored domes would appear at random, the gifts of chance. Like us hearing the sinister rustle of leaves during a stalled moment of those games we played in the woodlot. My little brother and I would bring the box turtle home, where we'd built a cage out of old window screens. At first it'd…

With Child

When my love walks, the fetus sways asleep, its face covered with fur. She walks to work. She walks under the trees, through the dilapidated halls, telling her students you can do it. But when she comes home, and lies down, tired and willing to forget herself, it begins: the kicking, the panic within. She…

Names

The names of stars: Sirius. Arcturus, Alpha Centauri, Vega. The names of Hungarians: Laszlo, Tibor, Zoltan, Sandor. The names of the great rivers: Nile, Congo, Amazon, Orinoco, Zambezi. The names of ships: African Dawn, China Bear, Coral Sea, Delta Queen. The names of the Spanish explorers: Cortez, Balboa, De Soto, Coronado. The names on the…

Untitled

Love abandons you fear abandons you the summers fall on you in sheaves and who will — as you grow more fragile and smaller when the wind blows upward at the edge of the precipice — hold you back with a gentle touch.