If you were here I would tell you the story of my life since we split up and hope we both could find forgiveness. If you were here I would show you where I threw my ring, the birch and aspen trees that watch over it, the raven that picks at snow trying to find it. If...
Poetry
Broken Pools
i. a warm hand open. two eyes night-shaped. fingers or feet having waved aside the tidal comforter. frogs had their feat last night. the way they started slowly with the first drop and built it up, note by note, like a slow sea rising. ii. you could tell the world had...
Somnolent
When the fatigue began again, I welcomed it like an old friend, like the one who stopped calling right after we shared an expensive meal. After that, I told someone how I was tired; right in my soul, which I felt, was a feathery thing. I pointed to my sunken...
I Try Not to Place a Brow in
This is the fourth season—counting backwards, that I haven’t heard from her. I’d met Madeleine in September, and left her there, too, eight years later by the Salines, red-brown and ribbed as her hair in rain. It’s difficult to tell apart what the heart remembers, and...
“I don’t absolve my responsibility in killing the family dog” and “Movie idea”
I don't absolve my responsibility in killing the family dog First of all, a chore wheel is a draconian invention. Talk about dire circumstance. It should never get to that. Second, it was Harry’s turn to rake the driveway and Dad said we needed a new rake and Ma said...
Don’t Walk In On Paradise Naked (or a Mononet for Love)
The bullet lodged in his rib missing him For he was his heart and it was safe That from which she was made saved their love It had been a ricochet from a wayward gun To the tree of knowledge to his chest An absurdity of physics and mathematics He took it as a sign...
Tik Tok Dance Tutorial
1. Hands in front of you, sway hips x2. A woman with parts of her stomach injected into her ass is teaching us how to dance. 2. Draw heart on chest. She doesn’t ask us to adore her, she doesn’t have to. 3. Tap each wrist x4. I’ve lost whole years of my life watching...
The Saddest Music
Then, by a tree, we come to a stop. I think of impetus as a mysterious intrinsic property. The perseverance of things in themselves. How this tree, for example, persisting in its treeness, will eventually envelop this wrought iron railing. Will subsume all foreign...
Elbow Grease
hemianopia
one. i didn’t look in mirrors. glass refracts broken images that remind you of the way you shimmer shimmer unreal in your own mind. everything outside your head is in your head, still. one reality warping yet another. a gelatinous fragment of the passionate sun,...
Verdant Hope
I longed for spring, and it came, not sun and crocuses but frigid rains, drifts drowned away in a day, and undying winds. Restless, Spring moved to my living room. What to do with Grandmother’s once prized rug, these sodden cushions? Vines laced through our new...
Rabbit Hole
I Mom hires a magician for my eighth birthday party/ We have it at the Red Room at the Officers Club in Mcguire Air Force Base/Somehow a lot of friends appear/There is a rabbit[There is always a rabbit] & a man in a white suit rolls out an extra-large sheet cake...
Instead
This was my first Father’s Day Without my Father. As the son of a workaholic, I don’t know if working on this expired holiday honored him or distanced myself from him. Every dad entering with his kids to buy them something... bittersweet like aspartame, a sugar...
The Golem Visits the Marc Chagall Exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery
There’s a village I return to like a beggar working the houses, a burlap sack on my back. I forget what it means to be filled with secrets, the silence of houses sleeping under snow: My memories are a series of windows, smudged by cold and white trees fringing a...
Review of no farther than the end of the street by Benjamin Niespodziany (by Robyn Schindeldecker)
There Goes the Neighborhood: A Review of Benjamin Niespodziany’s No Farther Than the End of the Street In The Poetics of Space, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard draws a connection between the solitude of human consciousness and the solace of intimate...
When I Came Back Later, the Book Was Gone
It belonged in a curiosity cabinet, between a homunculus skull and philosopher’s stone, not on abottom shelf of the school library. It was blue, untitled, and full of cryptozoological sketches ofdeep-sea creatures. It was, I thought, the most important discovery I’d...
Mark My Words
You can dump mein the general waste bin,or the lost & found box of a hospital.You can bury me undera nameless gravestoneat someone’s abandonedbackyard. You cantreat me like a pub toilet,write dirty words all overmy walls, scrape them,and vomit on my tired vinyl...
You, Drawing and Drunk Michigan Mermaids Sing to the Dead
You, DrawingUrgent and hawkish,savage man strokesskirr from your pen;determined lineschase skeletons,gouge the eye socketsof decayed Frida Kahlobursting with flowers,the Dance of the Dead.You are the pen and paperwithout pause or breath.Thick lines glide from...
On the third night without
sleep, I’m a fogged mirror. On the fourth night, I’m a snake, a lizard sliding legless. On the fifth night, I’m a puddle, a flat tire, a melted iron lung somehow still breathing. On the sixth night, I’m you, who you were, the you I knew before this...
Unsettling
Thrown for a loop(another failed romance)left uneasy I’d planned to retire early anyway(I hadn’t planned to move)but 30 years in California I thought, just go That I went in the direction of the failure was coincidencefew dared ask if I moved to Austin because of...
when asked what I learned during the ‘community forum’ on the appropriateness of my poem
A BINGO board
Frida at Henry Ford Hospital
A shy sparrow tucked into its mud hole,Never revealing its secret egg,I wanted my empty-nest uterus to sproutFlowers, lascivious fruit. But my cracked shellSpilled out bones and blood, amniotic fluid,And Senor I-Don’t-Give-a-FuckStitched my lips togetherTo keep me...
My Sister Doesn’t Remember
That scary dude we saw at the Safeway after the clubs closed.No, but I remember dancing at that lesbian club, she says.It was our 23rd birthday! My first visit to San Francisco.But nothing rings a bell about that dude on the checkout line.No, she says. I do remember...
The Inventor
after Maze, dir. J. Lenica, 1962 The man with the mechanical bird wings watches over the city and thinks to join it. But with him he brings the ticking of a clock. The skeleton of a dinosaur. An old man who can never leave the window. He will do the improbable. He...
Henrietta
Henrietta wonders what haunts me It wasn’t his whoop into the deep end, or how his mother had punched out her cigarette, one eye slit in the smoke, before plunging in to save him. And it wasn’t their legs churning like chum, or how I inhaled the sky and dove under....
Untitled, Because It Needs to Be Kept Secret
a night drive / in the Alfa Romeo / the top is up / rain is dying / we are returning from a steak dinner for two / a tomahawk chop on guitar / with roasted, creamed corn and asparagus playing backup / I’m driving / you’re riding shotgun / light from the bridge slices...
There’s a Fix for That
Do you prefer adding or subtracting? Yeah, me too. Fortunately, I was raised by a circus family, so I got a head start. Some people think there is a science to it, but it’s really just the elephant of surprise. Of course, it takes two to tango, but it’s always great...
Boys in jeans
on greased up hogs say Hey,shuffle in. Black stains and dustat the cuffs. Open road’s been goodto them. So good, the open road’srough throat. The songs it singsthrough the ache in their legs,the dull throb in the groin. Muscles pullon bones as they stretch betweenthis...
Glue, gurneys, the orchestra; Arithmetic; My Aphrodisiac”
Glue, gurneys, the orchestra There was no red carpet, but gurneys in a line and doctors, like motors, and yelling --a schizophrenic man, whose villain was everyone, improvising a melody of slursover the beeping of machines: his most fortissimo note,...
Dinner at the Brady’s
The Brady Bunch are carnivorous,I know because I crawl into the TVand have dinner with them.Sometimes they invite my sister, too.Their sheep dog is also carnivorousAnd so is Alice, their cook.My Mom and Dad are vegetarian.They are orange vegetarian parentsAnd even our...
Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV
Person The first five lines are always shit.A shock to the heart. Heartbeats cut each other offlike fine gems, end over endocarditis. No joke, perhapshyperbole? Though believe me when I saythe brow may be the only honest muscle in my face. Woman Such to the simple...
I have always wanted to be opaque
I imagine your honeycomb / lip balm lingering between the spaces / of my words / my chipped / sentences my declarations of clarity / and I thought fragmentation of the self / meant digestible / meant easy to handle but / staying with a sweet talker / I had to dissect...
Roots
Tomato musk clings to our skin, numb fingertips, and our breath plumes and hovers unspoken thoughts above our heads. Smoke signals. Warnings pretend not to see. Jude and I grip sturdy stems, tug until the roots rip free. Were these vines less rooted, it would be much...
Daughter
Adrienne Barrios wonders if Leigh Chadwick’s daughter will ever read these poems and feel the way a coyote feels when returning to its den after a long hunt, or if she’ll think, Wow, these are weird and Who the fuck is Adrienne Barrios, or if she’ll feel nothing at...
What I Hope He Understands About OSHA Regulations Regarding Live Wires
a live wireyou called yourselfhome from Dublin for a dayhomemust seem a strange thought6,000 miles from what it wasmaybe nestled safely now in what it isI find myself missing youhaving never known your touchand you tell me there are no rulesabout who you can missso...
Trapped in a World That Looks Like it Doesn’t Even Exist
The prison sits behind the apple orchard, bright curlicues of razor wire peeking through the leaves. It gives me a bad feeling but I have so many bad feelings and dark circles under my eyes. You don’t look so good, say my parents, friends, bus drivers, teachers, and...
Notes on Cycles
on the train, streaks of sky, green, beyond this roaring, I’m an adult with hungry gums, today I stole a peach-pink bra, there is no milk to soothe, both our bellies swelled, a night or so ago, a dusty blue-grey couch, I am only looking for somewhere soft to rest my...
Destination
I am in a parking lot & Dad appears. I gather quickly this is a dream because I don’t own an Odyssey anymore & Dad passed nine years ago. I ask him if he is driving and he tells me to take the wheel. Question this more than his not having gray hair, or a...
List of all the Things We Got Right
You were never shy with your smile—blazing white, upright vanilla snow cones.I was a ghost on the days you looked through me, but my heart would still halt mid-clang like a dinner bell had given up, a mother aware that her kids had long run off.Unlocked windows, an...
If A took everything
she left a shell for me to sleep in. i did a baby’s crawl inside. i loved the future in which nothing was taken. once, we belonged to the earth and our return will be long-awaited. my body aches. i am reminded the ways i’ve stretched thin. i anthropomorphize the...
No one will hear this, I say, to make it true
Under his covers, my youngest turns. Says he can't sleep. His face looks like mine. You'd have a hard time telling who's who, save his blond hair. He likes to watch me write in cursive, so I take a sheet of paper and write I love you. I was his age when my...
Static
The bedroom smells like furniture polish so I must’ve tossed the rags in with the sheets again. Light from the bedside table burns my fingertips....
Love Is An Umbrella Term
The lightning moves in next door. Now I am in love with the lightning’s wife. The lightning’s wife is forever poolside. The lightning and his son build a muscle car in the garage. Nothing is impossible for a willing heart. You have never seen thunder bathe in the...
<3 Your Biggest Stan
I am obsessed with _ _ is obsessed with _(not me) I read everything by _ my journal is full of poems to and about _ a letter I wrote but don’t send reads:I always feel you are closer to me than you areand alsoit is almost like we are friends is it a higher form of...
Look Back
And Orpheus, leading his lovefrom the cold caves of death,might understand the way my grandmothercut credit card confettiso no one could steal her identity. How can I explain the place where she lived? The ice cream shop is cash-only,dandelions in the sidewalks,the...
Mojave Rattler; ‘Til he’s had his fill
Mojave Rattler You remind me ofan animated mousesinging to the moon he charm-coiled inour onset. i doubt even a rattlebonedmojave rattler would strike such heartsore soft. at first i believedthe blurry vision weakened breathingwas stemming from july nevada heat. but...
Night
At night, I become my mother’s breath, swirling into the air, never to be seen again. That, or I come up short sealing the deal with every man or woman I’ve ever thought about sealing the deal with. That, or I put on my wife’s heels and practice walking down the...
Green Card Girl
I To come to you—I navigated bitter winds crossed oceans blind told the old world: I rescind. To be with you—I renounced my name faced down suited men left the birthing hips, never to return again. To sink into you—I sat in the waiting room...
Gravity
A penny glued to the ground is no different than love. Each a kindergarten lesson in futility and persistence. Chinese finger traps between us, our pulling brings us only closer, the gravity of us two planets drawing more near unwavering from our collision course...
Cold call
God, I’m expecting to hear from youAny day now, something winged alighting upon me,A Rush of Cochineal —The terms of the visitation I leave to your discretion. Superposition helps, as well as love —Though you must already understand, as you do the whorlsOf shells and...
a reminder of room three’s august
i can too easily feel my teeth rotting, feel the pulp ache to die off and the enamel begs to strip itself into the folds of my cheeks. i can feel my...
While Trying To Write A Poem I Realize I Have Nothing To Write About SO I Contemplate Having An Affair
Because that would at least give me something to write about. But I think of all the reasons I shouldn’t: I’d have to wear something other than yoga pants, have to go somewhere other than the grocery store or the park because despite romantic comedies, I’m not meeting...
The ghosts I choose
You were a lighthouse like Antigone. Coins pressed soft on each of her brothers' eyelids. Protecting baby-boy from the bloody shock of his own bones. Like medusa burying a snake from her head, you wrapped him like an umbilical chord. To bury in...
It’s called edge collapse:
Roots have nothing to hold onto.
Ghost trees enclose the living
on a ridge, outside, moving in,
on islands all over the Gulf,
one thousand abandoned oil rigs.
It’s called edge collapse:Roots have nothing to hold onto.Ghost trees enclose the livingon a ridge, outside, moving in,on islands all over the Gulf,one thousand abandoned oil rigs. The city tip-toeshere and there. Our childrenlearn from books, cartoonsand...
Antonyms for Fame; I am a Vender of Vintage Clothes
Antonyms for “Fame” 1. My name is a two-piece, my middle initial, a diamond belly ring. 2. In the evening, when the swimsuits escape their coconut- scented bodies, I sit cross- legged on the portable dance floor to think things over. 3. My name is the dance that...
Translations of Nostalgia
I had a weekend, pictures. I went aroundsightseeing all the old haunts. (Those still standing.)A photo of an old blue house cracked and faded,paint still on the surface.(A wish for wood glue and happiness.) The front door hingesstill held with crooked nails, a...
Forensic
Every time I turned around, someone told me my footing was off. That my feet, firmly planted or otherwise, were in question. It began as a joke that I began playing with myself, to identify people by the crinkle of skin around their hyper focused eyes. I was...
Butterfly Cage, The Light
Butterfly Cage when I was pregnant, all of my dreamswere about snakes. as much as I triedto dream only about baby kittens, baby puppieshuman babies, my nights would be filledwith twisting pythons gathered in knotsinside me, their slick skin undulatingin the dark,...
SEAWALL
It’s called edge collapse:Roots have nothing to hold onto.Ghost trees enclose the livingon a ridge, outside, moving in,on islands all over the Gulf,one thousand abandoned oil rigs. The city tip-toeshere and there. Our childrenlearn from books, cartoonsand...
Svalbard
I nearly went to Svalbard. That was before the news feature on the shot polar bear, the result of an ice safari. I was off to a conference on darkness. I didn’t see the foxes on the tundra, the aurora, or hear the paper on Verdi’s operas. I didn’t buy a passport, told...
Hom, or Someplace Like It
I know I’m being followed so I scoot into Hom furniture and pantomime a little showtune past a couple who are mid-argument near the sofas and theatre seating to dispel any cringe the 5-inch scar swathed across my head is itchier than a mug and reminds me to check in...
Sweet Insects
Best not to use this video, it contains the word cancer which can be triggering for some. Cancer triggers another triggers another. That is how half my mother’s family died. The other half only half-dead. Half-dead in that their bodies are limp, though they power...
Grown Home
Fire in the bookshelf,down low, askingHow long will you keep on asking?My hands never grew completelyeven into the waiting. Waterfalls without a tongue.It's sick to be alone in this roomand not recognize anyone.Imagine the beast shot, turning.Empty heart.I lasheduntil...
The Price of Freedom
In a world without water, gold dust is only dust. In a house without light, a boy stands on tiptoes to sweep high ledges, sneezing in disturbed plumes. His knees are bruised from stone steps and his wrists are chafed by imaginary cords that keep him indoors. Some days...
Crop and Delete
You crop and delete the pieces of him from your life slowly but with perseverance, until two years later there’s nothing left. There’s no new recipes stuck to the fridge, no Heinekens left on its shelves. No more expensive coffee taking up room in cupboards, no soya...
Bar Mitzvah
The day my father lost his voice speaking Hebrew, no one laughed, silence like a foundation, airy as the firmament. This day he was born, he was made to choose his mother, accept the father letting go: Blessed is He who has now freed me from the responsibility of this...
Into the yawning silence and Lullaby
Into the yawning silence Between thoughts and stolen glances, love wants to be fed, boil into the mouth swell the veins down the neck, tattoo the burning chest and coil like baby snake into the fork of the stomach. It craves to fatten inside your body, the ribs of a...
The Unbearable Inertia of Clothes
My clothes are ready to go—wings tacked on,leather belt snug, holey jeans unfolded, ready for the road or the Australiancane toads layered over it in blanketed miles. Hanging on the edge of flight, my clothesknow better than I which direction to go— run clothes from...
Mother as Conjunction
Spring 2020 I’ve had daughters move home on their way from one frayed relationship to the unknown. The tear-swollen eyes. The packed hatchback, mauve bedspread smashed against the passenger window. This is different. Two of my grown children are here for the duration....
Love Poem for Mr. Miyagi
From the first moment I saw you through that screen door,chopsticks in hand, I knew I had finally founda teacher to call my own.You started teaching us from the very beginning.When you turned around and gave Daniel that starewe all knew your first lesson: knock, don’t...
On Fire (Or, Last Wishes)
There is fire on the mountainAnd nobody seems to be on the runThere is fire on the mountaintopAnd no one is a-running —ASA, Fire on the Mountain I wish everyone I love the joy of dancing naked. Tonight, I am holding a piece of chicken from...
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know and Taking Notes
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know Little girl, living in the hard shadowsof mountains, crossing railroad tracksto play Bach, crows in the deep woods,fingers on the keys for hours every day –what do you fear? Did someone tell you your dreamsshould stay small?...
Fair and Lovely
we believed the neighborhood voicesthat said fair was most beautiful before they brought the ointmentturmeric, yogurt, and honey your face was buttermilkunder the nightlightthat one sideways molar, a diamond once you fit in your father’s palmswhen you arriveda pink...
Rituals
My love This morning mamá came into the kitchen and handed me her morral My love You dug out an ancestral pain inherited from my grandmother to my mother to me My love Mi mama, she has always told me que las penas con pan son menos So I make myself a taco with all...
Knives, Widower
Knives I can offer you only: this world like a knife —John Berryman A set of them in a house is nothing, where nothing becomes a meal for us. We are either kitchen or crime scene as our daily recipes prepare fresh wounds or silence in rooms. Words are food for...
Party On
They were yorking, yorking all over the city. Hot like the fourth of July. The crowd, wild grassing, and the night sky bannered and bottered. The hot hot. The zipping but not the zippers. They twobacked and sometimes three. Together, then apart. We dooglogged out of...
What is the Cube Root of Memory
The past has us passed out in attic rooms six to a futon bed, eyes heavy after sucking smoke from lawn ornaments— or...
The Strongest Man I Know
I cannot imagine the struggle Trapped inside my own body Which does not represent my true gender Reminded Every time I pass by a mirror Every month when red spills from between my legs Rejected By the outside world For something beyond my control But Darling, You are...
Spaghettification
Yesterday scientists watched a blast of light from a star as it was eaten by a black hole. A star with the same mass as the sun ripped into thin strips. Such a view is not usually possible because the dust & debris cover up the disruption. But this...
Armadillo Confronts Dullahan: A Lesson in History
I.Armadillo burrows in the rusty sand off Highway 66, lifts its miniscule claws towards the barren sky, not in any act of deference or shock, but as if it is imploring whatever gods might lie behind the ether, beyond Ship Rock. Armadillo recalls the deep past. Each...
when asked why they can’t sing “the N-word” in rap songs
…pretend you’re invited to a house party where everyoneis welcome. there’s no cover charge. no expectation for youto cop weed or beers for anyone. snacks will be provided.at the door, the host gives you the 411: welcome to the Terrordome! in here we’re all...
The Green Mustang in Front of the House
(is a) Dead frog hard and rotting at the curb; unmatchedhubcaps. One might call "to love" April's first sunwhere the skin burns, the heart envelopedin the hardiest permafrost, an epic tundra'sdeath; the infinitive. Tiny bees flyin irrational patterns near my feet. He...
MY WOMAN
i wail that my ama still cries over her beat husband I weep over my ammama counting her days even though I know brown women never die, I don’t know how she dosent know this I cry over days spilt over the course of hot dahl and weak chai my ama coming home to only wish...
Whitewashing Frank Butler
He is a salesman, can talk you intoa bigger barrel, can weave a tale with youas Annie Oakley, sharp eyed and lightand little as she. Build him into the manyou want him to be, shadow behindthat girl—how ordinary it all seems,blue eyed boy cutting steak acrossthe table...
If Only
It's amazing what a year in solitude will make me yearn for-- events I never liked in the first place-- overly crowded outdoor festivals with $12 bud lights and lousy cover bands, waiting in line for the breakfast buffet, the Chinese buffet, the casino buffet that...
Bending Genres Reading for SMOLfair- March 5, 2021 at 9:00 p.m. E.S.T. This Friday, we have a great line-up for our Bending Genres Reading for the SMOLfair book fair event happening March 3- 7. Fiction Editor, Meg Tuite and EIC Robert Vaughan will be hosting a...
A BBC Article Tries to Invalidate My Anxiety by Saying Women Are Drawn to True Crime for the Following Five Reasons
Fear of crime When I was a toddler, a killer held me in his arms, much like a man's knees hold space on a crowded train. A statement that says, Woman must make herself as small as possible, even if that means dismemberment. Compassion for victims A child scrapes...
All I Know About Sin is Robin Egg Blue
two gentle orbs nestled in a fallen thatched bowl found beneath the canopy of a Douglas Fir’s lowest limbs the neighbor girl wanted me dared me to crush it in my palm so easily I chose, and she looked satisfied before leaving me cross-legged in the pines my father’s...
You ask the soil if you belong
What has always been whisperedthrough other leaves grows bold,thunderclaps laterite-red:never. Transplant, hue and clay,your roots never the right length.Untrue/halfbrednot hybrid, weednot plant. Be silentand show some gratitudefor this flowerbed,for being at...
Wheatfield, with Crows
What if there were two moons or maybe even three, what if this crow was an envoy from the realm of the moon, and what if that country were golden, except for the sky and the ruts across the field? If we urge our mule forward, we will enter into the frame of the...
I DON’T KNOW HOW TO SAY HEAVEN TASTES LIKE MAPLE SYRUP
without just saying it. God / should have nothing less than some constant pre-pancake aura about him / some cosmic eggs-and-bacon energy luring us all inside. There must be / a reason we’re supposed to want to go / there. Heaven I mean / and I can’t imagine / people...
A Good Earth
I talk facing away from the dead They replace me with the change in my pocket A penny that has yet to be invented They say, “You have to know how to cut a throat on the way to cutting a throat” After sleeping on a mattress made from two garbage bags of clothes I...
Not on the Railroad Tracks
The tracks flanked the river between twin rails. The red light blinked westward a permanent, arrested fixture, begging stop forever. Crews cruise westward then eastward like any way was a good direction. The sun shone fall in its amber palette. Music stuttered...
Two Dogs
i. as of tomorrow as of today as of right now we are lost in the woods’ brown leaves parchment paper grateful for the perpetual churning beneath our feet well aware of tonight’s frost warning more signs pointing to us maybe getting past all this ii. the larger issues...
Razing, Scrubbing
Razing Unease like black smoke imploding at dusk. All things like a calendar or a game of hopscotch. Everything meaning something else how I remember watching a boy burn insects in the parking lot after church. His eyes like love always shattering—as if caught in that...
The Promise
Tongue my dress like goddess whisper. Lick the milk lazy or lie in rust still panting delirious petals—tell me the incubator we live in has blown a fuse or that tomorrow, my daughter will wake up inside the canyon walls I secreted her inside until the world’s oxygen...
Interstellar
exhausted by the enormity of everythingmy eyes refuse to focusand what is there to see?//so i surrender let them closeeven though there's so much ofnothing important to do//somewhere on another plane a bell rings and a small birdstartleddrops a pebble into the pond of...
Genius Zebra
Bandits came to an abandoned coal mine with roses in their teeth. I don’t know what they were running from, but they sure came a long way by moonlight. They set up camp outside the old shaft and laughed and hooted with their whiskey stories, clapping and...
HANDS STUDY, THE DAY YOU LEFT, AUTOPSY OF A DEAD (EYED) WOMAN
HANDS STUDY [1] These [2] we see daily. [3] holding so little. [4] Ringed [5] Wrinkled [6] Shaking [7] filled with want. [8] Scarred [9] with broken blood vessels on knuckles, a long scar along the palm, brittle nails breaking. [10] that need like lungs need air, need...
Things I’ve Learned, A Mouthful of Blood, A Fluttering
Things I’ve Learned There’s a softness to the edges of me—I am both the blood and the gauze, the bone- break...
Divorce Conditionals
If you were here I would tell you the story of my life since we split up and hope we both could find forgiveness. If you were here I would show you where I threw my ring, the birch and aspen trees that watch over it, the raven that picks at snow trying to find it. If...
Broken Pools
i. a warm hand open. two eyes night-shaped. fingers or feet having waved aside the tidal comforter. frogs had their feat last night. the way they started slowly with the first drop and built it up, note by note, like a slow sea rising. ii. you could tell the world had...
Somnolent
When the fatigue began again, I welcomed it like an old friend, like the one who stopped calling right after we shared an expensive meal. After that, I told someone how I was tired; right in my soul, which I felt, was a feathery thing. I pointed to my sunken...
I Try Not to Place a Brow in
This is the fourth season—counting backwards, that I haven’t heard from her. I’d met Madeleine in September, and left her there, too, eight years later by the Salines, red-brown and ribbed as her hair in rain. It’s difficult to tell apart what the heart remembers, and...
“I don’t absolve my responsibility in killing the family dog” and “Movie idea”
I don't absolve my responsibility in killing the family dog First of all, a chore wheel is a draconian invention. Talk about dire circumstance. It should never get to that. Second, it was Harry’s turn to rake the driveway and Dad said we needed a new rake and Ma said...
Don’t Walk In On Paradise Naked (or a Mononet for Love)
The bullet lodged in his rib missing him For he was his heart and it was safe That from which she was made saved their love It had been a ricochet from a wayward gun To the tree of knowledge to his chest An absurdity of physics and mathematics He took it as a sign...
Tik Tok Dance Tutorial
1. Hands in front of you, sway hips x2. A woman with parts of her stomach injected into her ass is teaching us how to dance. 2. Draw heart on chest. She doesn’t ask us to adore her, she doesn’t have to. 3. Tap each wrist x4. I’ve lost whole years of my life watching...
The Saddest Music
Then, by a tree, we come to a stop. I think of impetus as a mysterious intrinsic property. The perseverance of things in themselves. How this tree, for example, persisting in its treeness, will eventually envelop this wrought iron railing. Will subsume all foreign...
Elbow Grease
hemianopia
one. i didn’t look in mirrors. glass refracts broken images that remind you of the way you shimmer shimmer unreal in your own mind. everything outside your head is in your head, still. one reality warping yet another. a gelatinous fragment of the passionate sun,...
Verdant Hope
I longed for spring, and it came, not sun and crocuses but frigid rains, drifts drowned away in a day, and undying winds. Restless, Spring moved to my living room. What to do with Grandmother’s once prized rug, these sodden cushions? Vines laced through our new...
Rabbit Hole
I Mom hires a magician for my eighth birthday party/ We have it at the Red Room at the Officers Club in Mcguire Air Force Base/Somehow a lot of friends appear/There is a rabbit[There is always a rabbit] & a man in a white suit rolls out an extra-large sheet cake...
Instead
This was my first Father’s Day Without my Father. As the son of a workaholic, I don’t know if working on this expired holiday honored him or distanced myself from him. Every dad entering with his kids to buy them something... bittersweet like aspartame, a sugar...
The Golem Visits the Marc Chagall Exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery
There’s a village I return to like a beggar working the houses, a burlap sack on my back. I forget what it means to be filled with secrets, the silence of houses sleeping under snow: My memories are a series of windows, smudged by cold and white trees fringing a...
Review of no farther than the end of the street by Benjamin Niespodziany (by Robyn Schindeldecker)
There Goes the Neighborhood: A Review of Benjamin Niespodziany’s No Farther Than the End of the Street In The Poetics of Space, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard draws a connection between the solitude of human consciousness and the solace of intimate...
When I Came Back Later, the Book Was Gone
It belonged in a curiosity cabinet, between a homunculus skull and philosopher’s stone, not on abottom shelf of the school library. It was blue, untitled, and full of cryptozoological sketches ofdeep-sea creatures. It was, I thought, the most important discovery I’d...
Mark My Words
You can dump mein the general waste bin,or the lost & found box of a hospital.You can bury me undera nameless gravestoneat someone’s abandonedbackyard. You cantreat me like a pub toilet,write dirty words all overmy walls, scrape them,and vomit on my tired vinyl...
You, Drawing and Drunk Michigan Mermaids Sing to the Dead
You, DrawingUrgent and hawkish,savage man strokesskirr from your pen;determined lineschase skeletons,gouge the eye socketsof decayed Frida Kahlobursting with flowers,the Dance of the Dead.You are the pen and paperwithout pause or breath.Thick lines glide from...
On the third night without
sleep, I’m a fogged mirror. On the fourth night, I’m a snake, a lizard sliding legless. On the fifth night, I’m a puddle, a flat tire, a melted iron lung somehow still breathing. On the sixth night, I’m you, who you were, the you I knew before this...
Unsettling
Thrown for a loop(another failed romance)left uneasy I’d planned to retire early anyway(I hadn’t planned to move)but 30 years in California I thought, just go That I went in the direction of the failure was coincidencefew dared ask if I moved to Austin because of...
when asked what I learned during the ‘community forum’ on the appropriateness of my poem
A BINGO board
Frida at Henry Ford Hospital
A shy sparrow tucked into its mud hole,Never revealing its secret egg,I wanted my empty-nest uterus to sproutFlowers, lascivious fruit. But my cracked shellSpilled out bones and blood, amniotic fluid,And Senor I-Don’t-Give-a-FuckStitched my lips togetherTo keep me...
My Sister Doesn’t Remember
That scary dude we saw at the Safeway after the clubs closed.No, but I remember dancing at that lesbian club, she says.It was our 23rd birthday! My first visit to San Francisco.But nothing rings a bell about that dude on the checkout line.No, she says. I do remember...
The Inventor
after Maze, dir. J. Lenica, 1962 The man with the mechanical bird wings watches over the city and thinks to join it. But with him he brings the ticking of a clock. The skeleton of a dinosaur. An old man who can never leave the window. He will do the improbable. He...
Henrietta
Henrietta wonders what haunts me It wasn’t his whoop into the deep end, or how his mother had punched out her cigarette, one eye slit in the smoke, before plunging in to save him. And it wasn’t their legs churning like chum, or how I inhaled the sky and dove under....
Untitled, Because It Needs to Be Kept Secret
a night drive / in the Alfa Romeo / the top is up / rain is dying / we are returning from a steak dinner for two / a tomahawk chop on guitar / with roasted, creamed corn and asparagus playing backup / I’m driving / you’re riding shotgun / light from the bridge slices...
There’s a Fix for That
Do you prefer adding or subtracting? Yeah, me too. Fortunately, I was raised by a circus family, so I got a head start. Some people think there is a science to it, but it’s really just the elephant of surprise. Of course, it takes two to tango, but it’s always great...
Boys in jeans
on greased up hogs say Hey,shuffle in. Black stains and dustat the cuffs. Open road’s been goodto them. So good, the open road’srough throat. The songs it singsthrough the ache in their legs,the dull throb in the groin. Muscles pullon bones as they stretch betweenthis...
Glue, gurneys, the orchestra; Arithmetic; My Aphrodisiac”
Glue, gurneys, the orchestra There was no red carpet, but gurneys in a line and doctors, like motors, and yelling --a schizophrenic man, whose villain was everyone, improvising a melody of slursover the beeping of machines: his most fortissimo note,...
Dinner at the Brady’s
The Brady Bunch are carnivorous,I know because I crawl into the TVand have dinner with them.Sometimes they invite my sister, too.Their sheep dog is also carnivorousAnd so is Alice, their cook.My Mom and Dad are vegetarian.They are orange vegetarian parentsAnd even our...
Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV
Person The first five lines are always shit.A shock to the heart. Heartbeats cut each other offlike fine gems, end over endocarditis. No joke, perhapshyperbole? Though believe me when I saythe brow may be the only honest muscle in my face. Woman Such to the simple...
I have always wanted to be opaque
I imagine your honeycomb / lip balm lingering between the spaces / of my words / my chipped / sentences my declarations of clarity / and I thought fragmentation of the self / meant digestible / meant easy to handle but / staying with a sweet talker / I had to dissect...
Roots
Tomato musk clings to our skin, numb fingertips, and our breath plumes and hovers unspoken thoughts above our heads. Smoke signals. Warnings pretend not to see. Jude and I grip sturdy stems, tug until the roots rip free. Were these vines less rooted, it would be much...
Daughter
Adrienne Barrios wonders if Leigh Chadwick’s daughter will ever read these poems and feel the way a coyote feels when returning to its den after a long hunt, or if she’ll think, Wow, these are weird and Who the fuck is Adrienne Barrios, or if she’ll feel nothing at...
What I Hope He Understands About OSHA Regulations Regarding Live Wires
a live wireyou called yourselfhome from Dublin for a dayhomemust seem a strange thought6,000 miles from what it wasmaybe nestled safely now in what it isI find myself missing youhaving never known your touchand you tell me there are no rulesabout who you can missso...
Trapped in a World That Looks Like it Doesn’t Even Exist
The prison sits behind the apple orchard, bright curlicues of razor wire peeking through the leaves. It gives me a bad feeling but I have so many bad feelings and dark circles under my eyes. You don’t look so good, say my parents, friends, bus drivers, teachers, and...
Notes on Cycles
on the train, streaks of sky, green, beyond this roaring, I’m an adult with hungry gums, today I stole a peach-pink bra, there is no milk to soothe, both our bellies swelled, a night or so ago, a dusty blue-grey couch, I am only looking for somewhere soft to rest my...
Destination
I am in a parking lot & Dad appears. I gather quickly this is a dream because I don’t own an Odyssey anymore & Dad passed nine years ago. I ask him if he is driving and he tells me to take the wheel. Question this more than his not having gray hair, or a...
List of all the Things We Got Right
You were never shy with your smile—blazing white, upright vanilla snow cones.I was a ghost on the days you looked through me, but my heart would still halt mid-clang like a dinner bell had given up, a mother aware that her kids had long run off.Unlocked windows, an...
If A took everything
she left a shell for me to sleep in. i did a baby’s crawl inside. i loved the future in which nothing was taken. once, we belonged to the earth and our return will be long-awaited. my body aches. i am reminded the ways i’ve stretched thin. i anthropomorphize the...
No one will hear this, I say, to make it true
Under his covers, my youngest turns. Says he can't sleep. His face looks like mine. You'd have a hard time telling who's who, save his blond hair. He likes to watch me write in cursive, so I take a sheet of paper and write I love you. I was his age when my...
Static
The bedroom smells like furniture polish so I must’ve tossed the rags in with the sheets again. Light from the bedside table burns my fingertips....
Love Is An Umbrella Term
The lightning moves in next door. Now I am in love with the lightning’s wife. The lightning’s wife is forever poolside. The lightning and his son build a muscle car in the garage. Nothing is impossible for a willing heart. You have never seen thunder bathe in the...
<3 Your Biggest Stan
I am obsessed with _ _ is obsessed with _(not me) I read everything by _ my journal is full of poems to and about _ a letter I wrote but don’t send reads:I always feel you are closer to me than you areand alsoit is almost like we are friends is it a higher form of...
Look Back
And Orpheus, leading his lovefrom the cold caves of death,might understand the way my grandmothercut credit card confettiso no one could steal her identity. How can I explain the place where she lived? The ice cream shop is cash-only,dandelions in the sidewalks,the...
Mojave Rattler; ‘Til he’s had his fill
Mojave Rattler You remind me ofan animated mousesinging to the moon he charm-coiled inour onset. i doubt even a rattlebonedmojave rattler would strike such heartsore soft. at first i believedthe blurry vision weakened breathingwas stemming from july nevada heat. but...
Night
At night, I become my mother’s breath, swirling into the air, never to be seen again. That, or I come up short sealing the deal with every man or woman I’ve ever thought about sealing the deal with. That, or I put on my wife’s heels and practice walking down the...
Green Card Girl
I To come to you—I navigated bitter winds crossed oceans blind told the old world: I rescind. To be with you—I renounced my name faced down suited men left the birthing hips, never to return again. To sink into you—I sat in the waiting room...
Gravity
A penny glued to the ground is no different than love. Each a kindergarten lesson in futility and persistence. Chinese finger traps between us, our pulling brings us only closer, the gravity of us two planets drawing more near unwavering from our collision course...
Cold call
God, I’m expecting to hear from youAny day now, something winged alighting upon me,A Rush of Cochineal —The terms of the visitation I leave to your discretion. Superposition helps, as well as love —Though you must already understand, as you do the whorlsOf shells and...
a reminder of room three’s august
i can too easily feel my teeth rotting, feel the pulp ache to die off and the enamel begs to strip itself into the folds of my cheeks. i can feel my...
While Trying To Write A Poem I Realize I Have Nothing To Write About SO I Contemplate Having An Affair
Because that would at least give me something to write about. But I think of all the reasons I shouldn’t: I’d have to wear something other than yoga pants, have to go somewhere other than the grocery store or the park because despite romantic comedies, I’m not meeting...
The ghosts I choose
You were a lighthouse like Antigone. Coins pressed soft on each of her brothers' eyelids. Protecting baby-boy from the bloody shock of his own bones. Like medusa burying a snake from her head, you wrapped him like an umbilical chord. To bury in...
It’s called edge collapse:
Roots have nothing to hold onto.
Ghost trees enclose the living
on a ridge, outside, moving in,
on islands all over the Gulf,
one thousand abandoned oil rigs.
It’s called edge collapse:Roots have nothing to hold onto.Ghost trees enclose the livingon a ridge, outside, moving in,on islands all over the Gulf,one thousand abandoned oil rigs. The city tip-toeshere and there. Our childrenlearn from books, cartoonsand...
Antonyms for Fame; I am a Vender of Vintage Clothes
Antonyms for “Fame” 1. My name is a two-piece, my middle initial, a diamond belly ring. 2. In the evening, when the swimsuits escape their coconut- scented bodies, I sit cross- legged on the portable dance floor to think things over. 3. My name is the dance that...
Translations of Nostalgia
I had a weekend, pictures. I went aroundsightseeing all the old haunts. (Those still standing.)A photo of an old blue house cracked and faded,paint still on the surface.(A wish for wood glue and happiness.) The front door hingesstill held with crooked nails, a...
Forensic
Every time I turned around, someone told me my footing was off. That my feet, firmly planted or otherwise, were in question. It began as a joke that I began playing with myself, to identify people by the crinkle of skin around their hyper focused eyes. I was...
Butterfly Cage, The Light
Butterfly Cage when I was pregnant, all of my dreamswere about snakes. as much as I triedto dream only about baby kittens, baby puppieshuman babies, my nights would be filledwith twisting pythons gathered in knotsinside me, their slick skin undulatingin the dark,...
SEAWALL
It’s called edge collapse:Roots have nothing to hold onto.Ghost trees enclose the livingon a ridge, outside, moving in,on islands all over the Gulf,one thousand abandoned oil rigs. The city tip-toeshere and there. Our childrenlearn from books, cartoonsand...
Svalbard
I nearly went to Svalbard. That was before the news feature on the shot polar bear, the result of an ice safari. I was off to a conference on darkness. I didn’t see the foxes on the tundra, the aurora, or hear the paper on Verdi’s operas. I didn’t buy a passport, told...
Hom, or Someplace Like It
I know I’m being followed so I scoot into Hom furniture and pantomime a little showtune past a couple who are mid-argument near the sofas and theatre seating to dispel any cringe the 5-inch scar swathed across my head is itchier than a mug and reminds me to check in...
Sweet Insects
Best not to use this video, it contains the word cancer which can be triggering for some. Cancer triggers another triggers another. That is how half my mother’s family died. The other half only half-dead. Half-dead in that their bodies are limp, though they power...
Grown Home
Fire in the bookshelf,down low, askingHow long will you keep on asking?My hands never grew completelyeven into the waiting. Waterfalls without a tongue.It's sick to be alone in this roomand not recognize anyone.Imagine the beast shot, turning.Empty heart.I lasheduntil...
The Price of Freedom
In a world without water, gold dust is only dust. In a house without light, a boy stands on tiptoes to sweep high ledges, sneezing in disturbed plumes. His knees are bruised from stone steps and his wrists are chafed by imaginary cords that keep him indoors. Some days...
Crop and Delete
You crop and delete the pieces of him from your life slowly but with perseverance, until two years later there’s nothing left. There’s no new recipes stuck to the fridge, no Heinekens left on its shelves. No more expensive coffee taking up room in cupboards, no soya...
Bar Mitzvah
The day my father lost his voice speaking Hebrew, no one laughed, silence like a foundation, airy as the firmament. This day he was born, he was made to choose his mother, accept the father letting go: Blessed is He who has now freed me from the responsibility of this...
Into the yawning silence and Lullaby
Into the yawning silence Between thoughts and stolen glances, love wants to be fed, boil into the mouth swell the veins down the neck, tattoo the burning chest and coil like baby snake into the fork of the stomach. It craves to fatten inside your body, the ribs of a...
The Unbearable Inertia of Clothes
My clothes are ready to go—wings tacked on,leather belt snug, holey jeans unfolded, ready for the road or the Australiancane toads layered over it in blanketed miles. Hanging on the edge of flight, my clothesknow better than I which direction to go— run clothes from...
Mother as Conjunction
Spring 2020 I’ve had daughters move home on their way from one frayed relationship to the unknown. The tear-swollen eyes. The packed hatchback, mauve bedspread smashed against the passenger window. This is different. Two of my grown children are here for the duration....
Love Poem for Mr. Miyagi
From the first moment I saw you through that screen door,chopsticks in hand, I knew I had finally founda teacher to call my own.You started teaching us from the very beginning.When you turned around and gave Daniel that starewe all knew your first lesson: knock, don’t...
On Fire (Or, Last Wishes)
There is fire on the mountainAnd nobody seems to be on the runThere is fire on the mountaintopAnd no one is a-running —ASA, Fire on the Mountain I wish everyone I love the joy of dancing naked. Tonight, I am holding a piece of chicken from...
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know and Taking Notes
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know Little girl, living in the hard shadowsof mountains, crossing railroad tracksto play Bach, crows in the deep woods,fingers on the keys for hours every day –what do you fear? Did someone tell you your dreamsshould stay small?...
Fair and Lovely
we believed the neighborhood voicesthat said fair was most beautiful before they brought the ointmentturmeric, yogurt, and honey your face was buttermilkunder the nightlightthat one sideways molar, a diamond once you fit in your father’s palmswhen you arriveda pink...
Rituals
My love This morning mamá came into the kitchen and handed me her morral My love You dug out an ancestral pain inherited from my grandmother to my mother to me My love Mi mama, she has always told me que las penas con pan son menos So I make myself a taco with all...
Knives, Widower
Knives I can offer you only: this world like a knife —John Berryman A set of them in a house is nothing, where nothing becomes a meal for us. We are either kitchen or crime scene as our daily recipes prepare fresh wounds or silence in rooms. Words are food for...
Party On
They were yorking, yorking all over the city. Hot like the fourth of July. The crowd, wild grassing, and the night sky bannered and bottered. The hot hot. The zipping but not the zippers. They twobacked and sometimes three. Together, then apart. We dooglogged out of...
What is the Cube Root of Memory
The past has us passed out in attic rooms six to a futon bed, eyes heavy after sucking smoke from lawn ornaments— or...
The Strongest Man I Know
I cannot imagine the struggle Trapped inside my own body Which does not represent my true gender Reminded Every time I pass by a mirror Every month when red spills from between my legs Rejected By the outside world For something beyond my control But Darling, You are...
Spaghettification
Yesterday scientists watched a blast of light from a star as it was eaten by a black hole. A star with the same mass as the sun ripped into thin strips. Such a view is not usually possible because the dust & debris cover up the disruption. But this...
Armadillo Confronts Dullahan: A Lesson in History
I.Armadillo burrows in the rusty sand off Highway 66, lifts its miniscule claws towards the barren sky, not in any act of deference or shock, but as if it is imploring whatever gods might lie behind the ether, beyond Ship Rock. Armadillo recalls the deep past. Each...
when asked why they can’t sing “the N-word” in rap songs
…pretend you’re invited to a house party where everyoneis welcome. there’s no cover charge. no expectation for youto cop weed or beers for anyone. snacks will be provided.at the door, the host gives you the 411: welcome to the Terrordome! in here we’re all...
The Green Mustang in Front of the House
(is a) Dead frog hard and rotting at the curb; unmatchedhubcaps. One might call "to love" April's first sunwhere the skin burns, the heart envelopedin the hardiest permafrost, an epic tundra'sdeath; the infinitive. Tiny bees flyin irrational patterns near my feet. He...
MY WOMAN
i wail that my ama still cries over her beat husband I weep over my ammama counting her days even though I know brown women never die, I don’t know how she dosent know this I cry over days spilt over the course of hot dahl and weak chai my ama coming home to only wish...
Whitewashing Frank Butler
He is a salesman, can talk you intoa bigger barrel, can weave a tale with youas Annie Oakley, sharp eyed and lightand little as she. Build him into the manyou want him to be, shadow behindthat girl—how ordinary it all seems,blue eyed boy cutting steak acrossthe table...
If Only
It's amazing what a year in solitude will make me yearn for-- events I never liked in the first place-- overly crowded outdoor festivals with $12 bud lights and lousy cover bands, waiting in line for the breakfast buffet, the Chinese buffet, the casino buffet that...
Bending Genres Reading for SMOLfair- March 5, 2021 at 9:00 p.m. E.S.T. This Friday, we have a great line-up for our Bending Genres Reading for the SMOLfair book fair event happening March 3- 7. Fiction Editor, Meg Tuite and EIC Robert Vaughan will be hosting a...
A BBC Article Tries to Invalidate My Anxiety by Saying Women Are Drawn to True Crime for the Following Five Reasons
Fear of crime When I was a toddler, a killer held me in his arms, much like a man's knees hold space on a crowded train. A statement that says, Woman must make herself as small as possible, even if that means dismemberment. Compassion for victims A child scrapes...
All I Know About Sin is Robin Egg Blue
two gentle orbs nestled in a fallen thatched bowl found beneath the canopy of a Douglas Fir’s lowest limbs the neighbor girl wanted me dared me to crush it in my palm so easily I chose, and she looked satisfied before leaving me cross-legged in the pines my father’s...
You ask the soil if you belong
What has always been whisperedthrough other leaves grows bold,thunderclaps laterite-red:never. Transplant, hue and clay,your roots never the right length.Untrue/halfbrednot hybrid, weednot plant. Be silentand show some gratitudefor this flowerbed,for being at...
Wheatfield, with Crows
What if there were two moons or maybe even three, what if this crow was an envoy from the realm of the moon, and what if that country were golden, except for the sky and the ruts across the field? If we urge our mule forward, we will enter into the frame of the...
I DON’T KNOW HOW TO SAY HEAVEN TASTES LIKE MAPLE SYRUP
without just saying it. God / should have nothing less than some constant pre-pancake aura about him / some cosmic eggs-and-bacon energy luring us all inside. There must be / a reason we’re supposed to want to go / there. Heaven I mean / and I can’t imagine / people...
A Good Earth
I talk facing away from the dead They replace me with the change in my pocket A penny that has yet to be invented They say, “You have to know how to cut a throat on the way to cutting a throat” After sleeping on a mattress made from two garbage bags of clothes I...
Not on the Railroad Tracks
The tracks flanked the river between twin rails. The red light blinked westward a permanent, arrested fixture, begging stop forever. Crews cruise westward then eastward like any way was a good direction. The sun shone fall in its amber palette. Music stuttered...
Two Dogs
i. as of tomorrow as of today as of right now we are lost in the woods’ brown leaves parchment paper grateful for the perpetual churning beneath our feet well aware of tonight’s frost warning more signs pointing to us maybe getting past all this ii. the larger issues...
Razing, Scrubbing
Razing Unease like black smoke imploding at dusk. All things like a calendar or a game of hopscotch. Everything meaning something else how I remember watching a boy burn insects in the parking lot after church. His eyes like love always shattering—as if caught in that...
The Promise
Tongue my dress like goddess whisper. Lick the milk lazy or lie in rust still panting delirious petals—tell me the incubator we live in has blown a fuse or that tomorrow, my daughter will wake up inside the canyon walls I secreted her inside until the world’s oxygen...
Interstellar
exhausted by the enormity of everythingmy eyes refuse to focusand what is there to see?//so i surrender let them closeeven though there's so much ofnothing important to do//somewhere on another plane a bell rings and a small birdstartleddrops a pebble into the pond of...
Genius Zebra
Bandits came to an abandoned coal mine with roses in their teeth. I don’t know what they were running from, but they sure came a long way by moonlight. They set up camp outside the old shaft and laughed and hooted with their whiskey stories, clapping and...
HANDS STUDY, THE DAY YOU LEFT, AUTOPSY OF A DEAD (EYED) WOMAN
HANDS STUDY [1] These [2] we see daily. [3] holding so little. [4] Ringed [5] Wrinkled [6] Shaking [7] filled with want. [8] Scarred [9] with broken blood vessels on knuckles, a long scar along the palm, brittle nails breaking. [10] that need like lungs need air, need...
Things I’ve Learned, A Mouthful of Blood, A Fluttering
Things I’ve Learned There’s a softness to the edges of me—I am both the blood and the gauze, the bone- break...