Poetry

Four a.m., nothing moving, no hurry, dawn still has time to be choosy selecting its pinks. But now a breeze brushes across me—the way my skin is cooled off by the evaporation of sweat, this artistry, this system sombers me: when I am blown from the body of life will it be refreshed? I dread…

We know that somewhere far north of here the two rivers Ba and Ab converge to form this greater stream that sustains us, uniting the lifeblood length of our lands: and we believe that the Ba’s source is heaven, the Ab’s hell. Daily expeditions embark upcountry to find that fork, to learn where the merge…

There are too many characters in this book I’m reading. I can’t keep track of them all. How can I care who marries who, or what they wear? Nevertheless, each time one vanishes, I feel a sharp, bright grief, knowing they will not reappear. This is how a boat drifts out to sea from shore….

I see your clothes laid out on a bed: an elegant dress like a soft skin waiting for you to enter it and go to a funeral. Even from here I can see the fabric is soft, good quality. If you’ve left your dress on the bed your body must be close by… A larva…

Blood on the Moon —James Ellroy I thought the demolition derby or soap box derby or a roller derby, anyway, was where I would accompany my friend Pilar. I thought we’d be out the door when I mentioned “derby”, but not on this day. She just wanted to spend the hours at home; join the…

for Miroslav Nikolov In the year I graduated from West Daffodil Sr. High School there was so much romance in the hallways that, by the end, the powers that be—weary of it all— cancelled the prom. This forced us to explore each other’s undraped bodies exclusively in such automobiles and private homes as our district…

in all things, sonny boy, my father advised when I complained the mulberries that dyed my lips the protuberant shade of a girl’s had left me with a stomachache. He ascribed the quote to Socrates, his source for all words to the wise. But how did one acquire the wisdom to know which mulberry on…

Driving behind the slipstream of a truck, I wonder what the ruckus is, and pull over to the shoulder with the radio off and the radiator ticking down until it clicks in rhythm with the ticking of their wingtips and that mocking, ridiculous, bickering caucus begins to sound like bliss. It isn’t music, or worship,…

Parted, after thirteen years of shouting and silence and three kids. I was the middle one, the one in the middle. Sundays he took me to the movies, to the luncheonette, to see the freaks on Mermaid Avenue. Have I erased my sisters from the story? One was still an infant, the other Mother’s ally….