6.01 / January 2011
The Spectrum
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The home above us is made of red crystal. Its inhabitants are illuminated so brilliantly they become red platelets moving about in red veins. A new form of space is created: there are the crystal walls, the emptiness in between them that makes a home, and then [...]
Would Work
For Years He Caught Her Tears in a Cup
[1]Edit
I finish telling her how the Hepa 11 filtration system gets even the smallest dirt particles out of the carpet and am on the verge of revealing to her that “Kirby is more than a vacuum, it’s an entire system of home care.” When I get to my slogan, there [...]
Sustenance
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“If we get really lost in here,” Aphra says, “I might kill and eat you.”
“If we get really lost in here,” says Seth, “I’ll cut off your arm and we can roast it over a spit.”
Aphra and Seth are driving through the Angeles National Forest and the [...]
Mechanics
Mary froze in the front doorway when she saw Jonathan standing beside the sofa wearing a long-sleeved shirt-sleeves for the first time in his life filled with arms. The arms were plastic, as if he’d pulled them off a mannequin. They hung awkwardly at his side, as if he didn’t [...]
Three Poems
My Understanding of Love Between Women-or-La Macchina da Cucire…
is a show seen on YouTube. You watch
paper clothes stapled onto a naked woman
with an upholstery gun. Her mouth sewn
closed with a hand needle. In the back-
ground, string instruments strike dissonance.
A voice repeating the body is dead. But
you see her blink. Another [...]
Four Poems
BALANCE
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In the night, we listened for breath,
nostrils flared for the sting of urine, or worse.
We shoved laundry carts draped with linen,
gowns, and towels, passing the sleepers by,
stepping into the rooms and beside the beds
of dreamers with disloyal bladders.
If their sheets were wet, we changed them,
washing their flanks [...]
A Famine of Music
The Inventor of Ears
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From the door of the inventor’s apartment, a man with small satellites bolted to the sides of his head ran out into the night. His head low, he stumbled under streetlights and went downtown, homing in on the grind of traffic and noise of [...]
I Had A Female Pigeon As A Pet. I Looked In Her Box One Morning And She Was Dead.
They called my apartment complex White Harlem. My neighbors set their trash outside their door once, an old jewelry cabinet with rings and necklaces still inside. I stole it and wore the rings until the gold turned my skin green.
My friend Gina led me to play every day. Her sister [...]
Lamentations of Babylon
Androgyny was in fashion. Full frontal nudity. Glitter bands. Boys wore makeup and high heels. Nixon was president.
It was 1973. Cheap sequins were in the air.
Nobody wanted to spend any more time thinking about Vietnam.
The first time they talked, at a party upstairs on 2nd Avenue, Jean-Luc, [...]
Two Stories
The Soldier
The soldier was called into the sergeant’s tent and slapped across the face. There was something the soldier had done, of course, but he was not sure what. The sergeant was yelling at the soldier, about either the shine or lack of shine on the toes of the soldier’s [...]
Three Poems
If Desire is Not a Theater But a Factory, I Have Made Some Marvelous Gifts for You
I ankle, I ankle,
I bone and I lung and I clavicle.
I heart and hear, neck and timpani.
The membrane expands, spleening wide
to care. Grandly, I coccyx my lunula, inhale.
I mandible and tonsil cartotid patella:
vomer, lacrimal, [...]
Fucking Mermaids
Olivia stares at the wooden floorboards and sees pools of water by the sofa. Her eyes focus. Her legs are bent over the arm of the sofa and her jeans are ripped down both sides. Yes they are stuck together. She is perspiring heavily and water is dripping off her. [...]
The Fawn Skull
Lori thought they should call him Rape Face. She slid the article across the table to me and laughed. Some guy the paper nicknamed “The Forest Flasher†had tackled a jogger in the woods, mashed his dick against her face, and run off. She was his fifth victim.
I’d slept [...]
Two Poems
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Your Pain is 11 Things (And I Hope I’m Never One of Them)
1.
your pain is a limousine
a beautiful vehicle by which to carry
the less fortunate
2.
your pain is a vegetable cart
in a supermarket world
when you bring your lover an apple
it is by the sweat of your back
and every [...]
Two Stories
Memoir
Girl #3 says Be my boyfriend? On top of me her breath smells like nothing. I look at the remote control. I look at the ceiling fan, it’s spinning. I imagine cold against her back. There is always sweat on her brow when we kiss. Girl #1 has made her [...]
How We Keep It Fresh
You put on the sexy French maid outfit. I put on the denim jacket and the horn-rimmed glasses, then taunt you, saying you look more like a Mexican. We go to a bar where I brawl for your honor.
We have a stripper pole installed in our bedroom. You sit beside [...]
Three Poems
Poem Composed Entirely with Last Lines in Ed Ochester Poems
sunset rising on the window
in the old direction of the world
mile upon mile
the cornfields nourished by blood
stood firm against the moon
slowly as the stars
of a glacial lake
I love I love
beneath the white ring of ice
Poem Composed Entirely with Last Lines in [...]
Men With Own Tuxedos
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I went on Craigslist and I wrote the ad: Wanted: men with own tuxedos to be extras in independent film. I added, tuxedo must be clean.
Responses filled my inbox. Men who owned tuxedos needed work badly. I conferred with our director, a brilliant but impatient man. [...]