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...
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
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
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
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.
My favorite period historically
has been the interim period
Lunar Flesh
Your daughter wraps her arms around your waist and asks, Does everyone have a skeleton inside?
Already dinner is on the table. Brown rice, sticky rice, ginger duck, little saucers
Desert Dance
I didn’t believe tumbleweeds were real until I saw one
just like ghosts or gods or anything: I’ll believe it when I see it.
Somewhere I fused leaving & searching into the same
It was a year well-lived, but glamorous only in its simplicity– I had 6 roommates, all of us year-long volunteers packed into a one story house, where minus rent and Costco we each earned only $100-a-month in stipend.
Late June on the North Side of Town
We are in a paleteria eating lime & chamoy ice cream—
or is it sorbet? On our walk over here we talked
about ginkgo leaves & how they offer the
All the Lovesick attendees were gathered outside to listen to the event’s MC, but he was struggling to figure out how to turn on his mic.
Moonlight hiccups through the dirty windows, jumps around on our faces as the truck hits potholes. We’re already gone, smoking cigarettes.
the only person who texts me is my mom
mostly about how her back hurts
i send her a
proverb that says: you are as old as your spine
she replies: then i must be dead
my mom is always
It has been two and a half months since I’ve seen anyone other than Evan, my new baby, and my husband, not counting the rotating cast of delivery drivers who balance the occasional jumbo box of diapers on the top of the fence post by the gate.
I’m behind a snow plow, tonguing salt and exhaust fumes, white-knuckling a compact car, and screaming at a hamper of clean clothes to just keep from crying. Tom Waits is with me, wailing as we swerve, any of these songs seeming appropriate soundtracks to crash quietly into the ditch with.
He joins the queuing customers. He’d read the overhead menu when he drew closer. In the meantime he’d twiddle with his phone to avoid standing out like a statue. He wraps his scarf loosely around his
The night before the Super Bowl, we were drunk in Miami after hours of non-stop tequila Sprites.
When we were kids, my sister kicked this boy.
Victor Buono played King Tut in the 1960’s Batman show. He waddled in gold and red robes, his campy lisp at full-tilt. His voice warbled from his gut. He also played the Boston Strangler, a fat man in
