He will present it like an offering, like an opportunity, like the whole human history of men holding out shimmery circle-shaped objects as a shorthand for a promise. You, he tells her, can play the
My favorite period historically
has been the interim period
I wandered the recreated Titanic dozens of times during my middle school summer of 1998, hiding from the heat and shitty neighborhood kids by camping in front of our family’s PC. TITANIC: ADVENTURE
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
I did not ask for the children. They came uninvited, as most children do, sometimes with trinkets or pets. Of their pets, the seagull is my least favorite. He is an ugly, smoke-colored creature, quite
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
CHESTERTON’S FENCE
The poem is a small gate
on a country road
the rare motorist must stop
to unlatch
before going on. Even
the road is forgotten
more of a “long”-cut:
Nowhere to nowhere
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.
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
Moonlight hiccups through the dirty windows, jumps around on our faces as the truck hits potholes. We’re already gone, smoking cigarettes.
I caught a glimpse of a man’s leg, narrow but with glances of plumpness, the soft hairy shin, down to the inside of the bony foot, tapering into toes, and I was assaulted by a memory of you and your
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
In the backseat of a parked Datsun, she waits for her turn with Billy at the drive-in. He loves to take two dates to a double feature at the same time, switching girls in between movies. She prefers
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
