Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
Pearl— The first time I saw the heifer was the morning Clarke brought me back from Lexington in early June. She was out front, chewing on crabgrass around the porch. I thought, first, that must be unpleasant. Certain she was getting some of that milky gray gravel laid around the house between her teeth, my own jaw aching with every crunch. And oh, I could…
Reproductive Doctor Enclosed in each prescribing mouth is an eternal fire of authority. Patients must wear protective clothing and well-insulated masks against the sparks. It is difficult to fit inside the suit because the body is an ill-used paintbrush, her mural based on a series of small diurnal deaths. Am I already or am I not? we may ask each morning. Yes, I do hear…
You fly 4 hours to your mother’s province whereat lunch, your family listens to the chismis of the barrio while you speak to the itlog and the bagoong and last night’s rice,to the bangus on your plate that your mom debones for you,your fingers, too American to distinguish the bone from the meatthat you will dip in the sawsawan, communing at the center of your plate.Your hand-me-down tongue converses fluently with every note of sour,…
for Wọgọwanyị Great-grandmother was a woman sold twice, ransomed twice from slavers on the way to Calabar or Bonny dispossessed widow at the mercy of the world In duty she was bound twice— first, by marriage to a man who died young, then by the noose of gratitude and levirate traditions to the man who ransomed her No, thrice was she bound for between Man…
After the leaves fell over the courtyard, I saw you coming. Potholes heavy with bouncing sparrows became heart-throb. Every butterfly whirring, every puppy pulling skeins of tossed cloth was a blessing. Near hoarfrost I stared at your photograph; my lips kissed the masculine air. On my patio of dead roses, through stunned sky, beyond detonated stars, through your tutelary angels, from a world outside myself, you came toward me. No…