Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
we’ve eaten the ozone again now, the only ethical source of consumption in america is the dream. i awake with oil clotting menstruation-like between my toes, sealing me to the bed already wet with bloody goose feathers. jarred bits of permafrost sit thawing on my windowsill. the arctic bacteria floats to the top like upside-down maggot bodies. i tip-toe about the room. here, in america,…
Field with Miscarriage Your body spills acrossthe wheat. Empty husked, silver podded. Glisteningbefore dark. Your ash clings like blame to my fingers,the cellophane bag we brought you home in.Terrible, to choke on your airborne body, watchyou disappear with the sun. Segmentation Notes Twelve ribs are present.The long bones are unremarkable. The heart is opened in a sequential fashionalong the flow of blood. (body as water,…
In middle school, our hygiene teacher Mrs. Miller warned the girls about rogue sperm: they infest all the swimming pools and ponds, they inhabit the shower (don’t take one after your brother), they live on soap and don’t give up. I felt lucky to be an only child. Getting birth control in a popup clinic,…
Waiting for the Sun in Upstate New York, smeared with Criscoand a silver sun catcher unfolded across my chest,I think I have it all figured out.I’m 17 and plan to have a big house like Lisa:three or four bathrooms stockedwith thick peach Ralph Lauren towels.The rest, of course, is a blur—my career, family—the howmoney would hit my bank part. I knew I wouldn’t smell like…
Faded, threadbare, my earliest memories are stitched together by the whir and click of my grandmother’s Singer 66. She kept me clothed—through the corn-silk heat of Iowa summers to the snow-blind winters with ruptured water pipes. She followed patterns she bought at the Ben Franklin, but also those handed down. Afternoons, I’d wake from my nap to that chugging sound, follow it down the hall…