Idioms
Subject L was informally experimented upon as a child by her father. A lawyer by trade, he moonlighted as a secular Jewish Buddhist philosopher. Father: Imagine a cup. L: Okay. F: Do you hear the word cup while you imagine? … Continued
Poetry
A Girl Scout’s Dream
Translated from Polish by Piotr Florczyk When they execute me, not everything will come to an end. The soldier who shot me dead will approach and say: as young as my daughter. And he’ll lower his head. … Continued
Only Sand Survived
Translated from Polish by Piotr Florczyk All week they hauled sandbags night and day to the gate, to the windows. Facing the Germans, our house will be a fortress, we’ll survive. At dawn on the seventh day a … Continued
Reprise
Riding behind him it comes back to me like a kindness, this feeling of hearing a song I’d forgotten but know the words to—or my mouth does, the way my legs know to keep pedaling so I’m free … Continued
Forgot About His Mother
Translated from Polish by Piotr Florczyk She was dying in the basement, on sacks of coal, crying for water, crying for her son, no one was there. The son forgot about his mother, the son was cleaning his rifle. … Continued
The Arsenal Theater
White phosphor we wait for winter. People go. Inside the house sarin gas I know a village spills out into sky while a man pumps his gas america- stubborn. White phosphor my arches itch, my blood carried by mosquitoes as … Continued
Sweet William
The book on gardens is inconclusive, in the margin maintains that A battle rages concerning the origin of the plant’s name: Saint William Of York versus Prince William Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland versus William the Conqueror. I have my … Continued
Massive Efforts
You’ve arrived, dog, at the Museum of Fine Arts, packed in a foam-padded wooden crate, and now, gingerly broken out, placed at the show’s main gate tight-lipped. Greeter, first contact, shouldn’t visitors hear that during your stint as number one … Continued
this is why we can’t have nice things ||| from Bodega
I am going to build you an island and you are going to love it. I am going to carve your face into a mountain. I am going to buy you a present. It is a cat and you are … Continued
I couldn’t tell if it was a gun ||| from BORT QUARTERLY
but I wanted to go skating solo while I stoodlooking in through your foggy windowwhere you weren’t watching television or eatingbut getting a blowjob and tilting your head backas if the sun were rising and you couldn’t waitbut she or … Continued
In a Landscape: XXXVI
What year, what moment was it, when all the television aerials came down from our roofs? And now, the skyline is getting all junked up with dangerous-looking post-apocalyptic telephone poles that list with hanging wires. You see them a lot … Continued
A Reading at Woolsey Heights ||| from the East Bay Poetry Summit
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlDffZ-ry7I?rel=0] *** Andrew Durbin is the author of Mature Themes (Nightboat Books 2014) and several chapbooks. His writing has appeared in BOMB, Boston Review, Mousse, Triple Canopy, and elsewhere. He co-edits Wonder and lives in New York. Andrew Durbin’s … Continued
11 Ways to Make Me Miss You ||| from SHAMPOO
:neIs there really something?go see. :wo You can die like a poet Head in the oven Metalled bone on the ceramic Body in the atmosphere- People can too fly. :hree Or like a starlet Fireflies drowned in gin and good … Continued
Now These Objects Will Move By Themselves ||| from Asymptote
Hsia Yü reads “Now These Objects Will Move By Themselves” Every time you get to thinking this time doesn’t count Every time you come to feel this one now isn’t real The air is shot with the sound … Continued
A Limitation of Birds ||| from TYPO
—after Landis Everson “A poem can often be made much more successful if the poet puts into the poem, freely and unselfconsciously, all the birds he wants. Once the poem is finished, he then simply discards all of them.” … Continued
Pat Robertson Transubstantiation Engines
NO. 1 First I was fellating an African despot for his diamonds, next I was paying a hooker to give me back my teeth. You think I’m kidding about the diamonds; I was looking also for some gold. … Continued
Rom-Com
1 A city. A city getting closer. A city rising from a jet-way marshland like a heaven of pure hope. We’re low over water and there’s a dock, a breakwater, and, yes, people walking here and there—no, striding— … Continued
Canal
After the photograph Manatee Drive 02 by Isabella Hayeur, 2011 No one who has ever seen a body of water has not imagined drowning. Surface divides my eye and my breath holds me. The underskin of the canal grows … Continued
The Total Number Of Things That Matter Is On The Rise ||| from Phantom Limb
Someone right now is a nervous wreck biking against the dark ribbon of a highway like some kind of quiet disaster. What is up with everyone’s apartment infested by bees? Why did you instead gently ease the door back into … Continued
Friday Night Lights
Upstairs the child rattles her crib against the wall. I trim my nails and think about the future. Some rockabilly song plays on the radio, the voice of someone announcing a football game coming down the road. Now that I’m … Continued