Archived Roundtable

Sergiy’s mother, she is sometimes talking. She says, Sergiy, what is this macaroni factory you call hair, styled by the night? The comb is not the enemy. She says, Sergiy, come here and unfuck this mess in the kitchen, you with all your ketchup and kubasa, the filthy...

maintenance medication blues #36 (mood change) trying to force a mood change the inside joke of climate control smear myself something impressionistic with these cocktail party hues of sunset purples over delta blues twang-jazz holiest presses nylon to mahogany...

Dear Vincent,   Has your ear been burning? My students spent the semester discussing you: they wrote letters to you and each other, ekphrastic descriptions of your paintings, final projects and artistic and creative writing that summarized and stitched your life with...

Solitude      Her right hand was so chewed up by the churning machine at the mill that she was left with little choice. Little choice but to have a dowdy female surgeon attach a claw-like contraption to what straggly shattered pieces were left behind. If only she’d...

Blues lap beyond darkened edges, and plead me by filigreed gold into florescence. When you see that, you sear a tortured eruption, that which boils in your core.  In body-rock, your breath becomes anchored. Anger’s leash, like a molotov, is tossed at subjection. Damn...

           The Office Next Door has gone silent only memories speak its history no more students whose sign-up sheets shadow the entrance   no more Spanish intonating air Argentinian soccer jabs humor so subtle my laughter crept in the pause   no more mutual...

Hi everyone, As you might have already noticed, I've been working on some layout updates to the Roundtable and Weekend Workshop pages. You're going to encounter a few more as we head into June. The two majors ones are you'll now find the different monthly content on...

The Vocabulary of Water   At the mouth of the cove, bunkered by sly aspens, she strips without saying a word—blouse, shorts, shoes, bra—everything peeled away like petals lifted off by a laconic wind, and for a moment, I have no breath or excuse not to do the same,...

Your silent withdrawal, like an old thickened toenail, rock hard, that softens in the soak. I carry what you gift, and what I seek to grab.    I am 17 when you are 21, home from your tour.  We stand outside on a late February afternoon as mum takes a photo and...

Room 139 in the Psychology Building He came with the room. Or maybe it was she? They? Do word bubbles have genders? They have the personality of the purple-haired aunt who removes her dentures half-way through the day while sipping iced-tea and pronouncing that if you...

Beauty is only skin deep — or so they say. How deep is skin? Elle’s is so deep that she takes her teeth, mouth open twenty centimeters and gnashes, nibbles. She starts every evening, when the sun is leaving its spot from the hazed horizon. She waits until then because...

            Here’s somebody trailing––             a hunter asking what can’t be answered. What is hidden under Mnemosyne’s dark wings?             what under her belly?             Haven’t I told you enough?                         No words for that which is still...

Universal Plumber I reach into darkness and touch your lost rings, shattered glass, expiration dates. Without crawl space a house cannot exist. All things float on absence. Butcher shops, copters. Goggled I descend into the miasma of your past, stinking of rot, rust,...