Most recent stories

April, Thirteen

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There is a roofer straddling part of our house, pushing shingles off of our roof with the edge of a shovel. …. I've thought seriously, at times, about becoming a nurse. Seeing your mother in a hospital bed, hooked up to a tube, more than one, too…

True-Life Microaggressions or How I Learned To Live In America

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You speak English so well.

Naked Coffee

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My wife makes coffee naked. Didn't used to. Back then, before the accident, she hated her body. Says that's why she gave it to me. She's serious about it too. The coffee, I mean. Developed a whole ritual around buying, measuring, pouring. Every day it's the…

Egon Schiele In Prison

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With his hand, he sees through walls: from the street, From Schonbran park, girls go to rest in his house. They sleep off parents’ beatings. They eat.

This Is What Happens to the World in 10 Seconds

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1. Everyone disappears.2. Stars map themselves.3. The moon fills her bathtub over and over. You can't watch it for too long or you go mad, shouting, "Just get in, get in!"4. The ghosts of certain broken poets stand under apple trees and lean their hands on the…

Privacy

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Spying is a different concern. Privacy also. I feel there is a loss of privacy just in believing or realizing it is possible; our forebears did not experience loss of privacy digitally, perhaps in another way.

My Piper Laurie

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Eddie meets Sarah Packard, a “college girl” played by Piper Laurie. She walks with a limp, a fact Eddie doesn’t notice at first because she’s sitting down at a diner table in a bus station. She’s alcoholic and writes poetry.

The Alchemist

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A new constellation in the sweet hereafter.

So freaking tired

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So many dreams I need to visit, though

Sarah the Witch

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Secretly she suspected she was really a witch. She didn't have green skin or scraggly black hair, and certainly no flying monkeys. Maybe those came over time, the more bad things you did, the more ugly you became until all the world could see how horrible

Spinning

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Ride me, I say, and you never hear. No matter how I shine my padding, it's never what draws you to me. I only get to touch you when you feel guilty, and most of the time, it's only through shorts and graduated compression socks. What does my desire matter? It all comes out…

May, Twelve

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I feel unlike myself, I think. I've been afraid of notebooks, pens, writing. I've hoped for telekinesis between empty pages and my mind. The hoping leaves me empty handed, and I have nothing to show. I feel unlike myself. I feel the whites of my eyes as…

Like the Goats

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...

only, remember me

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I know how deeply your hands plunged into my fire. I remember putting my arms around your back and holding you in the flames for as long as I could bear it. And I remember feeling you slip away, serenely, with that light that urges the rose up out of my s

Five Stories About Inexperienced Youth

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1. Pharmacy Randy approached the counter. It appeared that the only person in the pharmacy was the pharmacist himself, Mr. Crubby, and from the sound of the stiff white bag crumpling he was busy saving someone's life, or at least ameliorating someone's …

Lost Love Poem

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Was that the door slamming?

Ah Ha!

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His head was usually full of ah ha!, a luminescence that folded around obstacles like smoke.

Motivation

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Motivation always needs to come from somewhere. For some all it takes is a sunny day, a smile from a stranger or a simple pat on the back. Others demand a fire lit, a carrot dangled or a whip cracked. Yet here the sun had set, the fire extinguished and th

Duck for Dinner

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My friend and I were once walking the aisles of a supermarket because we decided we were going to have roasted duck. We didn’t know how to cook, but as the old Filipino reds used to say: If not now, when? If we don’t learn how to cook now, as in NOW, then

Intimate Dialogues - "Ledge"

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It was a mildly windy day of the working week in the financial district of the city—the bright morning sun was out—when a security guard was called to the fifteenth floor to deal with a disruption. “This way.” Someone pointed to a desk. At the desk

Rush

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Rush had a black eye and a bucket of dirty water. Look, a baby turtle he said, like that explained everything. Yes, I did lack a turtle so thank you for disappearing for three months and returning with a goddamned turtle. His weird homecoming gift took my…

Pigeons Have Copied Your Brain

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The Pope is too busy shopping for clothes to control your brain.

Gymnopedies

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Does sound shape silence/ or silence shape sound?

The Poet Reads

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If ever I read a poem aloud It will not be from a podium’s shelter

Invoking Fire

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We talk of his time in the jungle.

George the Coward on Staying Home

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He knew she’d spend the day furiously scrubbing the best she could too, despite the hot house in the middle of a Southern Summer, and despite no matter how hard she tried, the place would always look filthy.

You Were On Top of Us Freely

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You turned to the beautiful youth because we were light, because we were so full of life that our skin alone could not seem to contain us. We were burning on all sides for the world. Shade, shadow — nothing. Nothing the moon. You lifted the cloth and peer

The Women

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I crawl under a table in the kitchen and listen to the women talk.

13 cyborg poets

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1. Lost in the Vision Matrix, J0hn Clare transmitted a distress signal designed to be audible only to himself.2. T S El10t ran on a complex algorithm that produced seemingly fragmentary results. However, if you run Imagewise an underlying order appears.3. C0ler1dge suffered…

On the Road

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how did they not know