Poetry

And we’re proud of ourselves for eating soup in season. Lentils and split pea, like our grandmothers, who always kept their clothes from splitting in time. When bad things happen, it’s important to remind ourselves that we’re real, even when we don’t want to be. The same is true of love and pumpkin pie, which... Continue reading→

Waking Up in Florida Water from a sprinkler hits the window every twenty-seven seconds. A mockingbird rises and falls along the power lines running through the back yard. She sings, lifts into the air then settles again. After that, freight trains loaded with products bound for South America chug toward Miami, traffic hisses coolly on... Continue reading→

Under an electron microscope everything’s a life raft factory dual-use school house Bauhaus birdbath cathedral. In the mirror though it’s mano a mano and that’s just the fists of the eyes shadows so obviously blunt force dreamlife. Here in the blue waves forgotten for years then fucked with in interrogatory bursts I talk a lot... Continue reading→

Dryfork, WV So far, I am one of the fortunate ones Away in the hills, cocooned ..........by birdsong and love– Lichen pale and slow on the trees ..........just outside the kitchen window ..........Onions Bananas we buy green ..........ripen–we believe in that much ..........future, at least Red bud tree begins its journey ..........In the evening, the... Continue reading→

My Mother Loves My mother loves an underdog, she loves an old-fashioned donut, a cigarette, a Diet Sprite, a cigarette, a Diet Sprite. My mother loves the homeliest hometown weekly newspaper; she'll read the whole thing and I think she also loves the raving kooks she knows by name on the editorial pages. My mother... Continue reading→

laughing loudly in the aisles of a beauty supply store or yelling to a friend down the block our joy our rage our love always full volume always seeping from our mouth like it’s too much to swallow growing up in white spaces made me want to be small I was taught to say excuse... Continue reading→

The evening my mother’s second marriage died, she held her daughters' hands in the ocean and exhaled the habits of a wife – infidelity has no taste buds   ..........the night before, my mother stuffed faith and submissiveness into turkey and beat them twice, groomed my stepfather's cheeks after dinner stopped being dinner and became... Continue reading→

Ghazalish, The Flood Here is what I want you to know about the silence, still as death and colder: it moved from you to me, see, here in this bonecage gone titanium, this immune system propped by goblin armies: couplets emerge from scar, relentlessly enjambed. This body is a verse form dealing with both loss... Continue reading→

Uncle Mark told me if it didn’t wear a hat, my hair would snap off. I liked courting some dangers, skidding down the hill to school right after soaking my long, thick hair in the clawfoot tub. My uncle tried to break me, pulled it a few times. Never cold enough to break. I didn’t... Continue reading→