We were only aware of small parts of ourselves and they became everything. Just our crimson kickpleats. Just our ghillies, the black latticework of ankles, our fists, white hearts clenched around a bit of sleeve. Entrechat. Over — the stiff panels of
It claimed a padlock yesterday, withered in my hand. In Denny Brovsky’s Ford this morning, my foot pushed through the cab. A coat of paint slows the spread; I’ll surely lose my fence. Anna sliced both legs on the porch rail’s ragged edge. With every
Route 22 has swallowed up too many bodies before their time swerving over medians, yellow lines splashing through sleet. against concrete his body, ejected like cassette tape his tape, pulled out and spilling, coloring the white field with red turned black in the night. where
The sky is the bright orange of midnight, and it hangs like salted dew on my tongue. I inhale the filthy perfume with a gasp in, a rattle out, and Mom says not to huff the ozone but it fills me with greedy thoughts of
I’d sing you a better lullaby, babygirl, if these chipped walls cradled soft notes right. They sag and give, the way Mama’s voice does when she tries to sing the doxology. Church never held no cradle for me, but you know how She grew
Is it lonely up here, mountain ghost? Perhaps the beauty makes up for it alone. Perfect symmetry, an ocean of green beneath the white powder snow. It’s famous up here, a painting off the coast of Kanagawa serving to show how beautiful loneliness can be.
I get his text in the middle of the day between ignoring looming paper deadlines and watching my best friend rant. It’s the first sign of life from him in over a month and the messages reads a simple “Sup.” S—soft and hissing, ice creaking
Silo number nine looked like the Tin Man’s head, bearded with the shed that bristles Management Only The fog clung to the roof like a laurel, wreathed with six dollars more the next Friday. Walking down the corn was a grown man’s job, and Your
Missing you is easy when The rim of my red plastic bowl Chips gawkish fractures into the egg in my palm. Maybe I miss the porcelain bowls you picked out when I was seven. Maybe Inland Empire Eggshells just crumple easier into my bowl-bound Flour
After James Wright Now, at twilight, the grasses in the field are green enough to smell. White-tailed jackrabbits dodging to the tree line. Their skittish ears remind us we are not alone. Hiding in the shadows of fallen-branch shelters, they are the most patient.