Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
Already dusk, the geese, half wild, fade from the lawn. We sit near silence, our feet soaked. Heat hangs onto the night like fever sweat in a blanket, and stars take place in the waning familiar. It’s not that there’s nothing to say, we just know better by now. Tongues honed on imagined accusation, we hum instead, feeling blindly for the moment harmony settles into…
like Mund, or mouth. Something that widens and glows. Sometimes you see me like a planetary affliction. Body that pulls. But then you remember I am just as meat as you are. Waiting to be swung from the butcher’s hook. Of another mutual mismanagement of emotion. Torn skin, bitten tongue. A tooth swallowed spends its remaining time chewing oblivion,…
Galaxies In art history I learned ghosts sneeze when they hover near paintings The ectoplasmon their skin turns green People tend to hoard seashells from abandoned beaches after spending an afternoon with me We sit on the patio next to a building flocked with pigeonsand drink tea darkened with bourbon I’m kidding I’m sober now Ravens are fantastic translators of human speech After a day…
Their shirts are blue and red, striped and checked, the collars popped, armpit seams untouched by antiperspirant. They are puppy-limbed and footed, eyes wide and unshuttered as lighthouses. The music doesn’t matter: Backstreet Boys, Bloodhound Gang, radio-edit Eminem an arrhythmic heart-skip of censored somethings. The boys take turns careening across the circle, hips loose, ankles floppy, knees jerking in and out. The more daring snap…
My grandmother only calls me to complain about deer and their incomplete bodies. Her backyard gutters with fog, so they bother her piecemeal. On monday she finds antlers stitched into moss and forsythia. Or on thursday, two tongue-tails bound at the quick. She spends my birthday tallying hoofprints and occasional hooves. She cajoles me to return and collect them. I used to clean her yard…