6.12 / October 2011
The Empty Place
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Houston was forty-two and going to seed. He had gray in his hair and mustache, and his mother, when complimenting him, had stopped calling him handsome and had switched to “distinguished.†For the first time in his life, he felt old, and by consequence, a little bit [...]
One Man Ponzi
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True, an oak smashed the roof, and mice cracked the cinder foundation, but, Sonny, aren’t you bored of balancing checks? Your brow’s furrowed, your eyes, puffed. Remember back when, when you ducked into ducts to slither from cops, and smoked dope in the tunnels beneath college quads? [...]
Unholy
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after & for Roger Bonair-Agard
Dear Roger,
I’m laying on the sweetest stomach this side of Newark on a Saturday night trying to listen to her insides when I notice The History of Church Music sitting cool on the other side of the bed. The pages are [...]
Gary
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I once befriended a guy named Gary, a pale, skinny guy with sideburns and a quasi-bouffant hairdo, a guy who wore soccer shoes and jeans and shirts bearing the emblems of German football teams, a guy who’d been living out of his car and on the floors [...]
Ninibe and Tyyrhenus
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Ninibe was flipping through a positively ancient magazine when the doorbell finally rang. Now she was nervous. She got up and checked herself in the mirror; like always, the face and the body she had would have to do. She wasn’t a robot, and she wasn’t [...]
Pay No Attention to That Land Behind the Curtain
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I. The Night Before Deployment – Topeka, Kansas
What makes a king out of a slave? Courage!
What makes the flag on the mast to wave? Courage!
- The Cowardly Lion
I leave for a war that budded off into a separate timeline after we raised the victory [...]
Beautiful Girls
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And it was one of those summers. One of those summers that comes around every once in awhile with plenty of sun and heat and long days but somehow the nights felt even longer. And it was one of those summers about shared experiences. We all shared [...]
Three Poems
The Departure
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In winter, we pull on long underwear,
flesh colored and bulky under white socks
tucked snugly in around the ankles. Thermoses
full of hot water line up like nutcrackers
while ice bent the pipes overnight.
Grandmother searches for a picture
of grandfather, his forehead eaten by mildew.
I recount the seasons by the [...]
Mosquitoes
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I
We ride in the back of your parent’s car, watching the buildings get farther and farther apart. Our parents think we’re friends. I never said so, but I haven’t been your friend since sports camp last year. We had to hold each other’s hands in single file, [...]
Baltimore IKEA
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Both thirty-two but looking younger than our years,
we make a cute couple
as we wander artificial living rooms and kitchens,
poking fingers through denim belt loops,
testing out loveseats,
wondering if other shoppers invent stories about us.
Do they imagine we’re planning a wedding,
preparing to grow old
and share a life of ordinary [...]
My Un-Lecherous Life
Two Poems
Marlon’s Fingers
Still lookin’ for’em, you joked
a year ago, the first time
my eyes locked on your fingers,
the little that’s left of them:
ring and index
clipped at the knuckle;
thumb missing part of its tip;
pinky severed altogether.
The middle untouched,
a gesture kept at the ready.
My face lit with shame.
You grinned, blew me a kiss,
extended your [...]
Origins of Winter
1.
We Meet
I am the honey-limbed girl dropping wet petals
along the path, careless with beauty in the way
of the young; suggestive. Before dusk settles
in the cleft of distant hills, I weigh
my options: return home before dark,
or watch slow clouds like servants lay
a ruby into the arms of trees, a spark
reddening [...]
Save My Life Tonight
We can’t all help but feel a little disappointed that Dave Ogilvie isn’t here with us. This is the 2001 Reunion tour after all, but as devoted fans of Skinny Puppy we were hoping for an appearance by its onetime member and longtime producer. We don’t know him or anything. [...]
Three Poems
I Touch Myself
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I touch myself
in the dark
as a plane hums above,
pregnant with death.
I touch myself
as starlight sparkles
on the surface
of falling bombs.
I reach down, searching
for warmth, something
to hold and believe in.
I reach down, searching
for music. I play this body
like a broken chord, my fingers
raw with tethered [...]
As the Spirit Moves
In November of 1997 Corinthia Davidson got a letter from the Welfare telling her she had to come down and see them. She got up early on her scheduled day, and walked down the boulevard. The air was cold as the side of a metal shed. She walked through North [...]
Two Poems
La Chupacabra Returns In Form Of Kitchen Appliance
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Gobbling bones beneath the sink.
Then you will be redeemer, you will be
the whirl of the garbage disposal.
Broken wineglass on the coffee table. You held it in your hands
and then it wasn’t. The dust of snapped tibias still lies in the [...]
Two Poems
THE TOMATOES ARE CHOKING
in the grass
and the sun beats down
on us with our wrong names
and bowlegs
and our faces depressed and angry
for too many reasons
no one can name them all
and no one understands how it is
for you
except that it is the same
for them
we chew our beans and
die
and if we’re lucky we go
for [...]
Urbs in Amnis
After the divorce, you don’t want to see anyone. You don’t want to talk. You want to take your broken heart and put it on a raft and push it out to sea, which is an idea that came up in one of the final yelling matches, before the resignation [...]
Two Poems from Pin it on a Drifter
She isn’t beautiful. Her face
is the color of a walnut and her eyes
were dark tribunals weighing
the fact of me. Pinched.
But there was something-she was
the Sunday school teacher you loved
as a boy because you had never seen
someone beautiful. I remembered:
it is Sunday. I do not need your [...]
There are Places to Reach that are Equal and Violent
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And he has a pet rat, Ratty, who he holds up against the window so the front slant of his hairy face is pressed against the glass. See? he says to Ratty. Outside the squirrels are leaping from tree to tree and children with shorts and sandwiches [...]
Snapshot
Front row. Terrence stands alone, his right hand reaching across and gripping his left wrist as if to keep it still. Back row. His father, always squinting, the one who still asks Terrence to “toss the pigskin†although in thirty-seven years Terrence has never said yes. Next to his father [...]
Shortwave
This old bridge can’t draw
or won’t.
Still I crawl below
tying my things down in the dirt.
You come by to tell me
the dogs have run away
or that a man’s voice should fit
like a glove against your throat.
Then you shake my shoulders
so I’ll talk.
Wave after wave
a wet moon thrashes in the wind.
The littered [...]
Mount Bonnell
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My stepbrother, Will, is sitting in the chair that used to be my dad’s favorite before he left, and he’s smoking a joint and using a can of Diet Coke as an ashtray. He is talking about how the ego lives inside us all and creates pain, [...]