20 August 2010
fiction, short story
When I first bought my plastic ficus he was small, about as high as my knees. The bottom half of him was buried in a plastic, earth colored pot that looked heavier than it really was and there was a bed of faux-moss covering his lack of roots.
I wanted him for my home office because I was missing summer in the middle of November. He had been dumped onto the sale shelf and I saw him and knew that it was meant to be. His glossy leaves reflected the fluorescent lights in a way that was perfectly unnatural and completely beautiful to me.
14 August 2010
poetry
Poor dear, she'll never get to disappear
until we tire of her taste. Like the minute hand
that doesn't move, our eyes' formaldehyde
keep her glued. And our literature, like her,
stares forever back at nothing much left.
17 August 2010
poetry
How many public sinks left running for ghost hands?
Your change given in foreign coins and still
coming up short. Imagine all the salt shakers
loosened upon the world; names scrawled into sidewalks;
people who hate people and work in services
you have to tip; patrons making waitresses cry right now.
22 July 2010
poetry
I pulled a pocket watch from one of the
bodies tonight. It looks very old, has
diamonds as white as the droppings of an
aspen married in ash to a new earth.
Our sweet extinct are cheering in heaven!
12 July 2010
poetry
In 1994 you slung thirty dirty verbs and my sister's pacifier over
the cinder block wall separating our house from the neighbor's.
You might not remember, but then, you weren't the one who had
to climb over and salvage it, pal; I always had your back, I was
the fixer. And yeah, we've been through this—I know you don't
exist but I must admit, even 15 years later, when nobody's around
I sometimes stick my fingers in ugly places…
15 July 2010
poetry
Touch me
querida,
Inanna;
I swear,
this time—
we'll explode
like a super
nova—
like the last
passenger car
in the train…
27 August 2010
poetry
Born under the sign of Stromboli, wrinkled
As the face of the two-thousand-year-old man
With skin cap tied with braided thong beneath
His chin, pulled from the bog with forceps, Ingrid
My mother, my father a guy who lived in the sky.
24 August 2010
poetry
The shaman finds a mirror carefully slipped
beneath the water of a running stream
will open a window in the land of the dead.
Here, the yellow and umber leaves, doom boats
strapping the current, slip quickly over the dappled
bottom where rusted wheels and bent scaffolds backdrop
The Triumph of the Will as it simmers there, bubbling,
awaiting the buoys of resurrection.
10 August 2010
poetry
May you live long under our beds and in our closets,
in our washing machines and our quiet showers.
We undress for you like no one else.
May you breathe across me as I learn to sit with you…
8 July 2010
poetry
Whether you salt me or not
We swallow our mouths together.
We call states.
Name together the animals we'd kill
Singing O Dead Angels all the while.
5 July 2010
poetry
In the book there is a bloody picture of the bird.
Two women stretch the wingspan.
They are gloved and smiling.
Here off the alley we fend for nothing.
We move barefooted silently on stairs that do not creak.
30 July 2010
poetry
Before leaving the shop,
my mother waves
the tailor back, asks
for the remaining fabric
after the alterations.
27 July 2010
poetry
As if weeds, as if gardener.
And the chimp's owner swore
to the reporter she'd do it again,
raise the creature as offspring until
the mauling, the demolished
face, the frenzy, the bullets
piercing the animal flesh,
again.