Approaching the Tappan Zee Bridge I see a green highway sign reading “Life is Worth Living” with a phone number below. I ask my husband, “Do you think a lot of people jump off the bridge attempting suicide?” At first he says, “Probably,” which leads to, “I don’t know; it’s not that high above...
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I. Our pastor talks about cherubim on Easter Sunday. Cherubim, you say, like little angel babies, like cupid with his arrows, like paintings by Michaelangelo. When we look it up, we find out that cherubim guard the gates of Eden, protecting paradise from you and me. II. The condom breaks. Thin latex stretches, shatters...
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when you are gone and what you recall about where you’ve been and who you’re with will close down from the full size of your sight to a small circle pushed by a pin and for one brief second before it changes in the light still yellowing through a single hole every last thing...
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We sit on the tablecloth, junebug green with splotches of white daisies or wildflowers or tulips, indistinguishable in the dark of the icebox night, the sky injected with dim clouds in the spaces where stars should be. There are no more seats at the picnic tables that speck the side yard of the coffee...
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Now that you’re gone, I sleep in the middle of the bed, my head swallowed by the crease where the pillows meet. I eat the whole dessert, or none at all, ignore the buy-one-get-one-free deal on Publix ice cream when I go to pick up dinner for one. Now that you’re gone, I use...
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We fall asleep with our foreheads pressed together, the way our palms should be. Maybe this is how we’re so much the same, how our thoughts twine and twist, loop together like the shoelaces I fumbled with when I was six years old. Each time our tongues are wrapped I wonder why my words...
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for June You start in the usual way, centered, earth spinning on the wheel. You have to consider volume, the space required to contain or embrace—as you so often have— the beloved body, reduced in the kiln, vitrifying memory and affection in the glaze, hardening the walls your hands draw up from clay as...
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in Kerry Cannon’s basement, his cut-up-glow-paper walls surrounding us with so many smug stars and planets, while the Friends of Distinction slow-sung “Going in Circles” to emphasize the irony: I a freshman at Cathedral Prep in a dark room recognizing no priesthood beyond what I might sanctify by pressing Sylvia’s present willingness tight through...
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I called back my thanks, still focused on the fish I had pulled out by putting my hand inside its mouth, where what passes for teeth in trout conspired with my pink and silver treble-hooked spoon to complicate my rushing joy for one that had not gotten away. In my haste to show my...
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Blame that last flash and clap, tumultuous, explosive, as if the skies themselves feared what he did not yet see: the yellowed eyes, the protruding brow, green skin stretched like rough canvas over a hasty marriage of joint and bone. When that light rent the night’s dark skirts the stars themselves hid from the...
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I throw away the slacks of solitude socks of solitude leggings bloomers crinoline chemise lace bib buckram ruff jerkin over-blouse of solitude sash cummerbund foulard raincoat great-coat cape poncho parka shawl shawl top hat tiara beret fedora cloche of solitude girdle garters corset half-slip pajama robe kimono night-gown wrapper slipper sandal Stop I’ll keep...
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I want to dance like her on the crowded floor I want to writhe in music guiltless as a child I want eternal blood circulating like a halo I want to dance like a rising sun in Death Valley. I do not want to live like a shadow in my life I refuse to...
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The sun is going down—disappearing like me. I, holding on to the light, the last capture of my sight. Soon my blood will spurt like a burst pipe over the warm summer field. The greedy animal will satisfy his thirst. Go ahead, eat me, eat all of me. Do not tranquilize me. Do not...
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I got called in to a little dark room, windowless. Mrs. Lopez showed me a picture book. Khang, I say. No, river, she says. Liver, I say. Not liver, it’s river, she says. That’s what I said, river, river, river, khang— It’s a khang! She shook her head. Look at my mouth, she says,...
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When baking something fluffy like divinity you always want to allow the eggs to get old first let them sit out of the fridge for a couple days Although I am sure there’s a reactive chemical explanation, I don’t understand the science of it, but it’s one of the few truths my mother told...
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The people in the health food store don’t look healthy which is why they’re here. I’m here to get carrot chips, craving crunch, flavor, after visiting my mother at the home where flavor only appears in faint whiffs of memory, where people in wheelchairs suspiciously eye the applesauce on their trays delivered...
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She sits on her bed all day every day, wearing nothing but a stained smock from yesterday’s closet. She holds a long white candle under her chin but never lights it. She is out of matches. No evidence of nourishment, she’s sustained by watching clouds hump like the oversized white cushions...
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Get inside a sequined dream. Quiet girl on whose quiet back, on whose upright lips— a line to break open. Fissure of words against memory’s stone— a song in one ear.
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You will soon cleave away from your night like a fish, in the direction of your father who has eaten from grief, who leapt inside his fish. And you forget your mother blue who feels in her kitchen, who prays for you. While you collect dust like an old figurine; your heart...
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She starts with bookcases, ingenious designs that hinge on the shelves, the sides, ready to fold on a moment’s notice. Her lover holds disdain, like the shelves hold books she reads each night, and folds dreams in their pages. She covets a foam bed that folds into a couch. Even her...
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