The Poet’s Wife Bil’in Village, West Bank Abu Rani recites a poem, an allegory of figs and leaves he composed on the spot when he couldn’t find the poem we came for. He’s the poet of the village, and we...
In October 1990, three women leave a small town in West Virginia in an Oldsmobile Royale, headed for New Mexico. They bring with them some oxygen tanks, overnight bags, and a dog that does not belong to them...
Copper foil, screens, and flashing all work as the best way to eradicate slugs. As yet, no progress, and yet, orations from the flowers of state, a paean to the healing powers of purple blossoms, the endless...
Miss Rosier, who was childless, had us bow our heads to our fifth-grade desks on the appointed day, as though for prayer. She slowly ran the side of a pencil from the nape of each neck to the top of each head. We tried not to shiver as the pencil...
#1 A Portrait of a Gold-link Chain Great material of this kind requires mastery, requires great digging, yes, a great digger, and a heavy, well-stropped shovel. It purports the need for a good licking, a pounding and beating to leaf, or the material...
Is this a mishearing of “bud” or a mash-up with “Come back to bite one in the ass,” the desire to breed a new expression from established ones, the way my daughter’s science class imagined mating superheroes to see which powers the offspring would...
Ice on asphalt, fog on wing mirrors, land flat, a yardstick, a bad tire, dry rot on the sidewall, the map of where I’ve been— Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, the mechanic tells me, hard times lurk, bad news ahead. On to Milwaukee, to Minneapolis— I mistake the...
Suppose it Rained in Harmattan Suppose everything beneath this sky wasn’t dying of loneliness – or hunger. Suppose we sought a new God that cannot stand the sight of blood. Suppose there’s a new God in town, and nothing edible goes on...
A visual piece by Regina Marie in collaboration with D Hake Brinckerhoff _____ (O responds to several male professors who implore O to calm down & convert to a more modern & sensible ‘oh’) By Regina Marie Solo I sing, O, you...
Accident The witness alleged that the tram was run down by an excited horse whose rider found he’d lost control too late to prevent the collision. _____ Crossing When you cross the river, look up if you can. There’s always...
I am a person you can pay to outsource the in-person trolling of your long-distance nemeses. On Monday, I got paid enough to buy a sandwich for side-eyeing someone at a coffee shop. Yesterday, it was knocking someone’s ice cream onto the sidewalk...
HR Erasure: Policy on Clarity Use euphemisms. Be ambiguous. Choose your own definitions for words, your...
A great & maybe pensive blue heron in this black-glass office park stalks chill captive water solar -electric fountained to prevent stagnation & green blooms of lawn -rich algal slime the ponds rimmed meanderingly by asphalt walks &...
That place where it breaks—the faint hairline crack that snakes its spider web lines out in all directions, jigsawing sharp pieces out of what was once just a single thing: a window I have looked through forgetting the glass. The oak seen for weeks...
The water is yellow today, so Becca chooses the marigold placemats and beige dishes to coordinate, finishing with linen napkins and silver flatware (her pattern is Grand Baroque). She adjusts the place settings on the patio table overlooking the...
I Like eggs with brief craters, starburst damage masked, often, with plastic packaging, faults caused by mishandling, manipulated nature graded; any given woman. Oh, to be rogue, to know, to feel deep in the marrow’s soil that cracks do not equal...
IT’S TIME DAMIEN HIRST DIED IN THE PILL BOX, in the hurt love of God, in the shark tank-same place you put yourself in danger, in secret, in the butterfly wing’s solace ripped from blue flight, motor-driven, paint-splattered loophole dial to...
In a three day period, I sent about thirty cluster flies over, who were slow and dramatically big like crushing empty cans. If these flies, which apparently get in a lot of houses when the days are unpredictably frozen or warm, were beers, they...
1. Traffic cones pop-up like moving goalposts, out of nowhere, sidewalk, stoop, parking ramp and it wasn’t the utility van or work crews who fenced in projects mid-way. They’re furloughed. This is more a gaslighty, elf-on-the-shelf kind of mind...
My neighbor leaves his axe out in the rain. We are not neighbors, I don’t know His name; for two years we have waved And said something mundane about the weather As we passed. He’s skinny and gray and looks Like a salted redneck; he drives his golf...
I have two kinds of problems: urgent and important. Around the block picking up a few knacks, still, way earlier than Sissypuss, loser, to City on Hill. Shot shit, talked old tie threads, strategically inveighed. Wide-berthed chronic whiners who’d...
