R. F. Fortune, Sorcerers of Dobu (1932) They say he slept with his wifeLast night—but did he sleepWith his wife or was sheFar away? With an empty skinBy his side he slept. It looks for sure like he sleptWith his wife, but who’s to sayThat was her by his sideAnd not the hide she leftAs away she…
At this time of day, goldish-gray rains down and our garden plot turns to mud.I forgot to plant anything this year, but it’s totally fine because I saw a headline, Honey Bees Are Not At Risk of Extinction. For this, I praise last year’s plumeof borage, chamomile, salvia. So this is how things will be…
You’d think it was a teenager in a rented tuxgoing to the prom in a borrowed car butit’s a cedar waxwing in his cupsdrunk on juniper berries.I get it.I was allowed one dance at the senior promas my mother worriedI might have sex right after—disgracing the Lord and the familyin that order.The Lord in those…
The light isn’t right.The glare from the windowspierces my father’s glasses and he squints as I pressthe button on my phone.Again, he tells me. Take it again. And I oblige,trying to find a positionthat would hold him as he is now though he isconstantly movingto avoid the light. I wonder how longwe will continue this…
A tiny scarab landed in my hand. I see how this works. God just shrinkssmaller and smaller with every chance you let pass, every opportunityto take the message that the horse delivers, “until God arrives assomething, in the end, like you,” I said to the scarab, and with that, asif having had enough, once and…
In truth, who has the energy to be evil?One starts, perhaps, with bar fights, But the dentist bills alone have got to be crazy.Your money’s spent before you’ve begun. And who can actually afford a lair anyway?Wouldn’t we rather have that nice, Three-bedroom, two-bath, with enclosed garage,New roof, and exceptional curb appeal? And what realtor…
Moons falling, invisible hours, my son never leaves our nest—when the house is quiet, it’s most dangerous. The air deflates to flat, a flag cloaking the rooms. It scares me— this silence—his teenage shadow beneath my door, he pauses, moves on. His footsteps patter and fade, distant like gunfire on the horizon. His noises muffled behind walls—a…
First, you carry no rider. It is to sting and eat sweat, this life, but more itis to live near windows mostly in quiet, or to wait for the fast opening,and when it comes, I want to climb down from myself. I want to leavego the bridle. So I have started watching, standing at the…
Caught on my own between homes, I had no choicebut to live for awhile in the Lost and Found department of Trans-World Airline at LaGuardia Airportwhere I worked my first job and could not live. With a key to the dark back of the storage hangar,I made a space of lost suitcases stacked into a…
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