Jilly and I fought a lot when we were kids. When other folks tell me they never fought with their siblings, I think about all the circumstances in their childhood that would have made that a remotely
Tennis balls were always disgusting. That creep-crawly not-green not-quite-yellow felt that made my teeth grind and my spine twitch, always wet with dog slobber. And it never lost that toxic new car
HOOD
We jut Ma’at into our daily bread.
Turn mud into pyramid bricks,
shadows mapping the heavens.
We rise above the stars.
Invent language harmonious
with all creation.
Fight wars because
Loretta Lynn
Coal Miner’s Daughter
11 songs, 29 minutes
1970
The place is too small, but we don’t care. I don’t care because I’ve always liked small spaces (if I were an animal, I’d be one with
I sometimes wish we were pufferfish. There are the general perks of being a marine creature: silky filament gills that gulp oxygen from water, flippers to whirl through the waves, eyes that open in
This diner has been here since 1949 but I am sure that no one has ever looked as beautiful as you do sitting on these red vinyl seats.
I painted my lips and fingers red the first time I was unfaithful. It was in college, with a girl with sharp orange hair who had a smile that said come. I never really liked her--she was arrogant and
THE LOOKOUT
A person looks out onto the ocean. The water does not look like it is moving. Is it a real ocean? How are we to decide? There is something small and very far away. The person cannot
When Rose leaves, she hands me a lamp and says, “I’m afraid it will break in the move.” She tosses a bag of Twizzlers into her Corolla. The backseat is piled with thrift store dresses and Doc Martens.
She focuses on efficient point accumulation: jam, 12 points.
1.
Maybe I’m an idiot, but those waves are
talking to me. They fall apart on the beach
then recoil, and the phytoplankton glow in
their recession. That’s where I think what
they’re saying is.
Skincare for Trees
Take care of your skin she says, over the dinner table,
tracing lines on the table with thin long fingernails,
FARMHAND LONGS FOR LOVE FROM ABOVE
Thought regaling twilight with porch-grown ukulele melodies would suffice to lure somefowl over but since experience
It was a Sunday morning in Delta, Mississippi when the body of the missing Negro giant washed up on the bank of the river. First news of the creature’s arrival was brought to the town by a local fisherman...
Gentian Violet
For years I lied
to everyone
said gentian was related
to violet
I don’t know why
I slept with Sam in my bed when he was still a puppy, even though this is supposed to be a bad way to train a dog. He woke me up sometimes in those early months when he was never tired and always
Andy Carr is stocking shelves at his local Value King supermarket when a forty-year-old woman taps him on the shoulder and starts yelling in his face. By the woman’s word the store is out of stock of
MORNING
As a child I was taught
the small gathering of matter:
in the garage of summer,
a shelf of conch shells
flat yellow saddle oysters layered in jars,
small change purses of cicada
But every time I listen to Brothers, I can hear her voice.
As I headed north, to your border, darkness fell, and I could see only the two cones of light extending from the car’s headlamps. The road itself had no markings. It stretched into the black, a
About two weeks into the Coronavirus Quarantine, I began noticing some odd behaviors.
