How do we code trapped in the light— little spider in amber, extra in the camera flash. I mean, I can’t ungloss myself. Stuck, shining, the too-much of attention: bunny or doe, as in Jane, as in died of exposure, as in but where was she putting herself. […]
To the fourteen autonomous regions of my body hairs, welcome. Toes—good evening, are you blue? If the branch of the crape myrtle split you lengthwise, femur, would you thank it? You there, solar plexus, do you wince? Do you really see yourselves like two anti-naval mines long forgotten […]
When they lift the baby to my chest, his skin’s still slick with clots of vernix. The soft plates of his skull are compressed into a cone, and his dark hair is damp with amniotic fluid. I inhale the unwashed funk and watch as this tiny naked mammal […]
I’m driving to preschool in the fog, scrubbing the cast iron again, char under my nails, and hear it whispering, how easily I shift into the fitful shapes of duty, how the tinny bell of need rings and I fold, preen, wipe, kneel. It’s not unlike love this […]
Strangers always tried to touch my hair. They said, Why not wear a hat if you don’t want attention? I’m sorry if my body is alive. I have to beg my head to hold its tongue. So much as a hiss & it’s solitary. […]
Yes, in the great war we massacred dogs. Afterward we ate them roasted over fires. Wag your tongues all you want. We ate our enemies and their families, too. We ate the bamboo forests, delicious as arrows of asparagus, the mountains with teeth like sticks of dynamite. The shrines […]
Eyes blue behind scratched shades, we rubbed ourselves with olive oil left imprints on the pool’s wet deck. If our hips were still small enough to fit in swings, how big were our little outlines? This is how the Greeks did it, we figured, achieved that olive glow, […]
a beautiful outlaw Bad press? Add ache. Deter meme-streak: assure them, we’re death-mask empaths—just breeze-captured ash, steered here. See a TV? Act mute. Erase a week? Act dazed. What address redresses mar: madam, dear, the best? Here’s a muse-blast: we’re cash at a web’s cashed ATM, ether […]
I want to ask for your hand on my belly, the riverbed of your palm pressed to the empty, sun-warmed bowl. How hard the body fails without us even knowing, how the breakage is quiet as socked feet until all the windows are broken. I cannot have a […]
I remember icy water hauled up in a bucket from a well we were wandering by then and the wooden chest he tore apart with a claw hammer for a fire my name is not Jean said Jean my hands are not my hands are not done shaking […]