1670 4 2
|
To Charles Bukowski "I haven't shat or pissed in seven years," she tells him, negotiating each word around the Marlboro. Because he doesn't know what else to say, Isaiah asks, "Haven't you seen a …
|
167011
|
Her thumbs tucked beneath the waistline of her pants, slightly pulling them down to expose the eternity between belly button and bliss. I looked up at her as I slid my tongue along the rail of her hip, sucking at its point.
|
167020
|
I remember being sent a picture once from one of my old roommates, Louise, back in Chicago where I came from. The photo was taken when she’d come out for a visit to California. In the picture I am sitting on the front stairs of my house in the Rockridge
|
167077
|
When God blessed creation, a ewe gave birth to Adam. When he cursed Satan, Eve hatched from a crocodile's egg.——In naming the animals, Adam marked them for death. His own name was a slow fire. Eve's was an inferno.——In the shelter of the Tree of…
|
167063
|
You took up residence on the dark side of things, a bolthole in a wind-flayed right angle of a tower block where pigeons and suicides tumbled blackly on the air currents. You set about drifting off from who you were on a tide of cheap whisky and bad poetry, graduating…
|
16701914
|
We all//
fall short and fail.
|
167021
|
Clare sits bolt upright in the hard plastic chair, warily tracking every passer-by. In her lap, Kim’s hair is damp with sweat, dark blonde curls melting against her flushed cheeks. Clare absently strokes the length, soothing both of them.
|
167082
|
It was so hot we walked out on our husbands. There were reasons, we supposed. They left the refrigerator doors open all day, grabbing beers when they passed by, tossing the sticky caps upon counters. They drove their Metropolitans to buy food, leaving th
|
167064
|
A junkyard Bison seems an odd choice over the usual dog, but it did the job--trampling trespassers, vagrants and unautorized salvagers with a violent and admirable efficiency
|
167001
|
It was with the departure of their last child that the Beazleys became grotesquely petty with each other.
|
16692517
|
|
166932
|
A woman walked in from the kitchen. She sat next to him as he poured what was left in the whiskey bottle into each glass. “They could’ve given us more time to make a payment,” he said.
|
166952
|
Didn't he have like a frog
No lips so speak of, and the weathered lizard
Look of the frequently face-lifted?
|
166920
|
A spark is a gouged word: stewed to annihilate, scrambled, botched in a pot to dry. Lead us to the quiver, let us tremble. Noon, we paw nails under rugs, run fingertips over books, rip cupboards from hinges and spiral open the machine, for the creature is near the roof or…
|
166954
|
Never touch David Letterman's neck!
|
166966
|
A son packs his bag - bottled water, extra masks, and jerky. Mom paces behind him. “Don't go.”
|
1669112
|
I watched you knee deep in water with a little boy you were hitting.
|
166975
|
my God, I have no time, no time
|
166962
|
"What is a vageena?" I wanted to know.
|
1669101
|
Her preferred post-coital activity is to pant, to suck in air with urgent greed.
|
1669107
|
She can never say why, but guilt rides her bones
like the spirit. She rubs worry raw.
|
16691514
|
I wrote this during a poetry workshop at the Atlantic Center for the Arts with Carolyn Forché. January, 2015. So much more has happened since that stunning week.
|
166912
|
I am tired of playing the old game: Saying something old in a new way. So let me do the opposite:
|
1668137
|
Here’s how you do it. First you get a ladder, a long one.
|
166832
|
I don't know if I'm going to get Alzheimer's, but know I don‘t want to. That's why I just read “100 Simple Things You Can Do To Prevent Alzheimer's“ by medical journalist Jean Carper. Doing simple things is something I'm good at. And while I'm…
|
166820
|
I love reading about myself. There's nothing more gratifying than seeing my name in the paper, knowing so many people are interested in who I am and what I do.
|
166833
|
I know I’m slipping
into my mother’s skin. I answer the phone
with her voice; her hands grind the coffee beans.
And who is this listening to NPR in the morning
while the fresh-faced girls in the neighborhood trudge toward school,,
peonies han
|
1668156
|
|
166855
|
|
1668145
|
She's the one you remember when there's talk of the blow.
|
