6.02 / February 2011
Buenos Aires in Three Short Lessons
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I. El Beso. Riobamba 416, Abasto.
Sebastián spoke in castellano but when my foot fumbled he repeated in English, “¡No, no!, you must step on the beat.” I explained it wasn’t a language barrier but incoordination at the cellular level. I hoped he wouldn’t notice cracked calluses slipping [...]
Two Poems
And I Alone Have Come Back to Tell Thee
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There was no explosion and no collapsed mine.
There is nothing you can do that has not been done.
I have your signature. Your friends lined the curb
and lowered their eyes as you passed.
Listen to yourself rasp, your lungs a [...]
No Witnesses
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Mrs. Loveall is a hypochondriac who keeps her medicine cupboard completely stocked for every pain killing need-Percocet, Vicodan, Oxycontin, Flexeril, Dilaudid. After about five minutes of being let inside, Mrs. Loveall reveals the contents of her medicine cupboard to Marcus along with her current degree of bloating, [...]
Four Poems
What I Mean When I Ask You to Zip Up My Dress
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Every night I try shaking it out-the hole in my back,
between my shoulder blades and slightly northwest.
I loosen all the junk from an upended purse, weeding
through spent tissues; lipstick; a throat lozenge; toy truck;
book of [...]
Four Poems
(letter to her, without her, in red)
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Today was an O so lovely today!
Each flower I passed smiled at me
with its bright bright head & I
was breathing in the blue air. I said
hello to every orange & yellow scribble
drawn out from the big round sun
& the gray, [...]
Noct
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I was com
You said you would wai
Twelve hundred miles in a day -
I counted houses, then their ligh
Came home to an empt
Not even my shir
my green shir
Are you wearing it now?
It’s hot, the house is hot; the walls,
even the handle on the refr
What the f
What can anyone [...]
Parallax
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The Russians Have Come
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The Muscovites play chess at Denny’s until 1 am. The Siberians wait for the bus in the snow without jackets. The Georgians – they aren’t really Russian. They never were. They like to remind people of that. Years ago, Russia let out a bunch of Jews. All [...]
Hunger
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I had this boyfriend once who cooked for a living and he swore by putting blue cheese on hamburgers. I consider it when I go to order a burger but then I feel like no, no, that’s what a fat ass would do, and I hold off. [...]
Notes on the Notebook of a Five-Year Old Neurotic
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Once Upon a Time There Was a Pirate Ship And it Sank
When I was five years old, I unknowingly channeled the voice of Ernest Hemingway. Those were my words, scribbled on the first page of a marble notebook-actually, the only thing written in that particular notebook-in handwriting [...]
Three Poems
The Woman Who Bought Our Place by the Ocean Burned it Down
Where the house had been, hot ash
singed the bracken fern. Except it wasn’t a house;
it was a gas station, and perhaps
the ferns burned up
too, but there must have been blackberries,
skunk cabbage, ocean spray
with its little foam flowers
hanging like grapes [...]
Taking Form
The stripper said her name was Tesla.
“Like the engineer,†she explained, extending a long, smooth, high-heeled leg into the air. I looked at the hollow space where her legs met, the way the flesh peeled back against the muscle. A man to my right folded a dollar bill. He threw [...]
Vision Quest
Out in the woods late at night, beyond the city lights, you can hear them. You wouldn’t know they were even there, were it not for their howling. It cuts through the air, sending chills up your spine. Matheson tells me this. He says he’s seen them. He is an [...]
I Dream of Carl
I arrive, alone, in Vermont in the middle of March. The painters and writers and sculptors who got here two weeks earlier already know each other. I don’t know anyone, but before me stretches two weeks of no cooking, no folding laundry, no helping anyone with homework. All I have [...]
You
She says, “When I kiss you I can feel how much your teeth ache.â€
I kiss her again and she tells me that’s more like it.
We sleep in. All day we lay in bed like lumps, like lonesome cats and dogs. Pillows become our neighbors. When she asks me if I’m [...]
Wine of Youth
WINE OF YOUTH
The pigeons are as loud as airplanes – this is my first thought of the day. Then I hear Patty in the bathroom with the water running. She is brushing her hair. She drags the comb through her wet, brunette locks and it sounds like breaking tree [...]
I am
drinking my black coffee in the living room
when I hear the car door slam and through the white wall I
can see you. your hat suddenly transformed into a battleaxe
chopping vigorously at the air
in that faintly erotic manner
that you cultivate
as though you were the bastard child
of paul bunyon and oscar wilde
—and—
it [...]
Oscar The Normal
The first thing they noticed was the arm. Not the one he had, the one he was missing. He knew what they were going to do well before they did it, because he’d had years of experience watching the changes in people’s faces. He followed their eyes as they darted [...]
The Tar Painter
William watched Franny as the tar heated over the fire. They’d tied her up to the same wooden stake they always used. She was clothed in the traditional black dress, the hem covering all but her feet. She wasn’t crying as William thought she might, but turning her head inside [...]
Two Poems
True Crime
This story was almost lost in a muddy culvert. We found a rip in the underbelly, dug around with our grim hands. We touched it. Blue breath, a snapshot of the autopsy. Three clusters of scars across the thigh of an endangered woman. Can you feel the punch of [...]
Two Poems
Blood Orange
I plan on dying young.
Men will toast to my menace,
Classical fanaticism -
crowns, palm leaves from the coast,
my dead hair curled, placed neatly
over a red pillow with citrus spit.
Hold me, the veined crescent,
a precious bit of Jupiter.
It is evocative to eat fruit with
both hands. Do you hate me yet?
You will.
When [...]