Those fireflies spark in the hum and burr of twilight, when our legs begin to itch from the day’s rambles. Chiggers and tall grass have left their mark, a tattoo…
There is much to say about the dirt. How it frolics beneath toes. I like to think it likes being touched — held. I watch how it carves itself into…
Content warning: contains descriptions of sexual abuse. Never granted a single kiss on these lips or the ones — bright pink roses between taut legs, scissors ready to…
one day, my mother stops coming down for dinner. she goes to a place not even my father can drag her back from, sleeping day after day in my brother’s…
(Genesis 19:34) Sheep-counters, camel-conquerors, gods-over- the-palm-groves-and-oasis-pools, hawk-handlers, royal-ensigns-of-the-Via-Maria, lamp-lighters, seed-planters, grape-stompers, shawl-weavers, sealed-secret-keepers, border-crossers – childhood was such a blast. But if one evening now, as you light a farthing…
I am learning the business of being loved, the way always lingers on the tongue after it’s spoken more than once. There is a rhythm to it, the banality of…
Worked me over something good Made me a jenny a heifer a mare Used the gifts I brought to bear My shoulders my muscle my mane Flaxen haired pony…. A…
No, I am not as old as the wilting membrane of earth – the skin of her secrets, too tightly breast-held and leaky. No, I am not as old as…
after Vera Iliatova’s ‘Reconciliations’ (2014) What do you think when you see people running? — Sometimes it’s just chaos, sometimes the other way round — happiness, excitement to just discuss…
Another blue period in the front seat, Dashboard dented, the steering wheel frayed, We come together as everything comes apart, We just want to stop the peeling We take our…
Children hear of water-hoardings. Lorelei floating gold cups, coaxing gullible girls down. Ancient cities settled by kelp and shells. Rivers refusing tossed-in shoes, certain that boys thought dead are somewhere…
We overlook the garden, let the leaves slip into slickness and harden into ochre moats. The dahlias hold their shape a few stoic days–– like pursed lips glossed, like winter-waxed…
A Pecha Kucha Those in the know have spoken so: the “R” months are for ordering our oysters. May, June, July and August show us R-starved risk and rife red-tide…
Been sucking the bones of this dead-dirt house for five long years, grinding wood flaying grass hefting beams spitting rage nails and paint against self and all whipping this soft…
Smothered by sun and time / one sun drunk lizard / and me with my belly exposed / pine wood rounds / tree rings naked and orange / sap the…
Pastor says as though encouraging us onto one of those carny rides that spins faster and faster until the floor eventually falls away beneath our feet leaving only the…
Slammed like bracken matchsticked and rendered back to bones of wood. Torn shingles hang like oak leaves from a ground floor roof. Glean denuded floors in sunlight. Bearing now lone…
for Mary “Mamie” Dickens Hush now, children, Father’s at his work. If faeries come to visit, please, speak in whisper voices, shhhh. Tidy up now, children. Hang your art…
A boy slumps sideways in a wheelchair, a breathing tube attached to his mouth like an umbilical cord. Riley could have been him if he had lived. The boy wears…
Darkness scattered among bodies left behind. We never knew if we were coming or going or if anyone would come for us. We were the lost ones. Sympathetic eyes mixed…
From the nightmare we wake to the dream before we open our eyes to reality I fear I fret I freeze I forge I face I forget I love you,…
I can’t hear anyone talk the refrigerator is buzzing I have homework we’re babysitting the neighbor’s dog Daddy comes home around six thirty, or seven, or eight It’s dark and…
For Bojana She is the call of a raven, sparrow bones, a cello suite wrapped in the flames of a punk rock refrain. She went into war with sparks on…
From here, you can see the fabric of the year scuffed raw and worn thin around a grey horizon’s fine and unforgiving rim. Today the sun is light and empty;…
Tiny, new habits of muscle hitch my hand and pen and encrypt each word as it’s put to paper. Lines in the letters tend to angle off for no reason…
After dinner we have time Daddy’s feeding tubes cleaned his pillows fluffed so Mommy, Paula, and I spread puzzle pieces on the basement tile floor. Manicured gardens surround an old…
The first time I see him after his ten-hour surgery, we sit in stuffed chairs in their living room where we’ve sat many times before. But I’ve never seen him…
bald rock-room, breathing sand drenched in the indifference to wildfires there are only two Basque people in Oakland we’re strangers and spend too much time eating ourselves our eyes are…
We will still walk hand in hand, talking each other down from our brittle edges and I will wonder if my mother’s blood has finally gone bad beneath the skin.…
#6 Can you tell me how much longer I get to be alive and in love? Maybe a person only gets a choice between the two and maybe it is…
boy is single boy is a no-name town he kisses death welcome or desolation boy is allergic to sunlight boy wears darkness on a starry…
Curb corners accumulate dandelions, cigarettes, & skeletons, compliments of the whirlwind as it keens through errant sunbeams. Antennae twitch at smashed gears. I nudge a broken spider with my toe,…
creates a snare drum throbbing eighteenth notes on my roof for a solid ten minutes. A bag of spilt pellets dancing on linoleum. On repeat. What gets me though is…
What damage can be done with two black eyes? Real destruction, like the planes of nine eleven Like a blunt twig, snapped in half and lobbed to heaven or some…
I Among them, There is nothing, Collected, Five mango trees Two julie One East Indian A number 11 A hairy Their building A soliloquy on ancestry Their home slotted above…
We’ve learned: the mind may turn to leaky vessel with fealty and narrative tipping into emptiness. So when we round the blind curve of Gold Creek and the outline of…
i. a boy stands at the edge opens his hands, to bless his body, i find myself crumbling inside his prayer —i, a petal dying in a festival of stampede…
The geese flew today: a vanguard of winter. Like a plough turning the soil, their skein furrowed the sky; wings plunging through the air, pulled up and away from me.…
